


Inhibited Lodgings

by Aelaer



Series: Earth-197320 [2]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: (for one chapter), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Friendships, Gen, Hurt Stephen Strange, Injury Recovery, Magic Suppression, Multiverse, Near Death Experiences, POV Stephen Strange, POV Tony Stark, Stephen Strange Bingo 2019, Tony Stark Has A Heart, of sorts, two opinionated idiots butting heads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-01-29 20:23:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21416143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aelaer/pseuds/Aelaer
Summary: His mind, Stephen found as he slipped back to consciousness, was lost in a fog full of muddled thoughts and memories. They flickered away like so many scattered fireflies, disappearing into the mist just as he was about to catch one.It took a moment to hold properly onto something; when he did, the first coherent thought he was able to process was,I'm alive. This is unexpected.Stephen finds himself at the tender mercies of Tony Stark, which... turn out to be surprisingly tender, all things considered. As he recovers from his near-death experience, he becomes acquainted with the eccentric billionaire known as "Iron Man" even as he tries to figure out the best way to get away from his hospitality. He has a job to complete, after all.Directly follows the events of the first story within this series, "Within the Shadows".
Relationships: James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Stephen Strange, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Stephen Strange & Wong (Marvel), Tony Stark & Stephen Strange
Series: Earth-197320 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1497917
Comments: 88
Kudos: 113
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Stephen Strange Bingo 2019





	1. Break me down and build me up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mystical_Magician](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mystical_Magician/gifts).

> As the A/N mentions, this is a direct sequel to "Within the Shadows", the first within this series. You'll want to read that before you read this because it really won't make sense otherwise. There was a lot of world building for the canon divergence in the first story, haha.
> 
> This whole story also serves as a bingo fill for Bad Things Happen's "Kind Restraints" and Stephen Strange's "'Lie to me.'" You'll find both the literal and metaphorical versions of the former and the phrase of the latter throughout the story.
> 
> A gift for Mystical Magician who anonymously gave the prompt in the first place like, in the spring. To another author, but said author let me run with the prompt so yay.
> 
> Beta'ed by nemmy, who is ever reminding me that American punctuation rules sort of suck, polishing my awkward wordings, and filling the plotholes with her brilliance.

His mind, Stephen found as he slipped back to consciousness, was lost in a fog full of muddled thoughts and memories. They flickered away like so many scattered fireflies, disappearing into the mist just as he was about to catch one.

It took a moment to hold properly onto something; when he did, the first coherent thought he was able to process was, _I'm alive. This is unexpected._

Confusion nudged itself in and a clearer follow-up question sparked through the fog. _Why is that unexpected? Isn't being alive a prerequisite of waking up?_

He was missing something. He was definitely missing something. This was not entirely surprising considering that his head had a certain fuzziness to it that he associated with really good painkillers.

Oh, hmm. Painkillers. Alive. Things were… those words made sense together in a way. He just needed to remember what the way was.

His thoughts were going around in circles and he tried to move his senses from beyond the fuzzy feeling in his head. Smell—always a strong environmental indicator—indicated fresh crispness, one he would associate with a hospital, but it was not nearly strong enough.

From what he could feel he was lying upon something soft; he was pretty sure it was a bed. All other feeling was rather muted, but something instinctual, something subconscious, told him that moving would be a poor idea right now. He listened to his instincts and instead paid attention to the sounds around him.

He couldn't hear anything. Stephen didn't think he was deaf, because while he didn't hear anything distinctive, there was this distant white noise that he couldn't yet identify. Everything was too muffled, too foggy. But wait… yes, there was something else beyond the background hums; there was a rustling of… of something. Something moving. It wasn't him; his subconscious was still dragging its proverbial heels against the idea of moving. Besides, he had no particular energy or desire to move, not with all this fog.

But he could try opening his eyes. Eyelids hardly counted as movement, did they? And some sort of visual might jog his memory as to what exactly happened, as his mind was still being incredibly unhelpful on that account.

It took a little effort, but Stephen managed to pry his eyes open, only to find his vision filled with a blurry white light. Annoying. He grimaced and blinked.

"Oh hey, you're awake."

_Who was…?_ Brow furrowed in confusion, Stephen looked over to his right.

It was then that he noticed three things: one, the movement of twisting his neck that way caused a spike of pain to burst from the upper left side of his back; two, that he was restrained at both wrists to the bed rails; and three, that the person who spoke was none other than the billionaire Tony Stark.

Panic flared across Stephen's mind and, without thinking, he pulled at his restraints; that only caused sharp points of pain to burst across his wrists and he clenched his teeth.

"Whoa, whoa, don't move," said Stark. "You need to stay still." He knew that _now_, of course. And he didn't move any further. He _couldn't_ move. He was hurt and drugged with painkillers and bound and completely helpless.

Something must have shown on his face because Stark's brow furrowed in bemusement. "You're afraid of me."

A dodgy weapons manufacturer had him tied up in some place unknown, of course he was—wait. Wait.

It all was coming back now. Alternate universe. Iron Man. His evil counterpart. Dying.

… how on Earth was he alive right now? With _Tony Stark_ of all people?

Stark was still waiting for an answer, so Stephen swallowed, trying to ease the dryness in his throat, and came up with a response that did not involve explaining the multiverse. Despite his muddy mind, it was pretty easy to do so. "I am currently restrained to a bed. I believe that's a rational emotion in such circumstances." His voice was hoarse and weak and he could not help but grimace to himself at the sandpaper sound.

Stark appeared surprised by that answer (and he truly seemed to wear his heart on his sleeve, he was remarkably easy to read). "Oh, well, you were bleeding rather badly and if you broke your stitches it would've been bad news for you. So we, you know, had to keep you still."

Stephen looked down at the high tech cuffs about his wrists. They looked tight, but despite that they did not really ache, which was a surprise in itself. He swallowed to wet his throat again. "I know what medical restraints look like; these aren't it." He swallowed again; he sounded like he had an absolutely horrid hangover.

"Hold on," said Stark, and he left his line of sight. He returned with a cup that had a lid and a straw. Stephen must have made a face, because the billionaire said, "Even if you weren't cuffed to the bed, I doubt you'd have the energy to lift this. Just pretend I'm not here."

Hilarious. But he was thirsty and had little choice in the matter, so he nodded and Stark pressed a button to move the bed into a more upright position. Stephen offered no protest to Stark holding the cup as he drank a bit of water. It was a complete oasis to his dry mouth. "Thank you," he murmured when finished; he still sounded groggy, but the sandpaper scratch was at least gone.

"Sure," said Stark, who seemed a bit off put by the comment. He sat back down and stared at Stephen for a moment before saying, "So the purpose of the restraints are twofold. I wasn't lying about the bleeding; it was really bad. But you also bear an uncanny—scarily uncanny—resemblance to a magic-using terrorist."

Interesting choice of words. He considered them alongside what he knew: that the last time he was conscious should have been the last time he was conscious, period. Stephen had not seen the extent of his wounds, but he had felt them and all the blood and trusted his other self when he said he had but five minutes left to live.

This meant that Stark came in nearly immediately after he passed out. It was very, very probable that the superhero saw Stephen's doppelganger at the same time.

Still. "Do you believe I'm him, this 'magic-using terrorist'?" he asked.

"I know you're not," Stark answered, and something within Stephen's gut relaxed. "But that doesn't change the fact that I don't know who you are, your intentions, or why you were with him in the first place. What I do know is that you can do the same sort of _magic_," and he made a face at the word, "so you get to wear the cuffs and keep the energy manipulation to zilch for the time being."

Stark made a fair point. But to tell him the truth? He would never believe him, and he was entirely too muddled to figure out a way to make the story more believable. Stephen turned his gaze from Stark to the IV in his left forearm. "Can we have this conversation when I'm not being pumped with painkillers?"

"Afraid we need it sooner rather than later," was the response. "Besides, this way it'll be more difficult for you to lie to me."

Stephen snorted softly, then grimaced when the action pulled on something. "At least you're honest," he mumbled.

"Well, they do say honesty is the best policy, whoever 'they' are."

He huffed lightly, then turned his head away as he considered what to say. In reality, he had nothing but the truth; a twin could be easily disproved and false stories could fall apart in an instant, especially in his current state. Besides, any falsehood would likely be as outlandish as the truth, so he might as well be honest.

Stephen exhaled quietly and said, "The truth is so far-fetched that I'm not sure you'll believe me."

Stark shrugged. "In the last few years I've seen Norse gods, a wormhole open up over New York, and an alien artifact give two normal teenagers insane superpowers and give life to an android. Try me."

When he put it that way. He turned his gaze back to him and started, "I'm not… exactly from here."

"That's really vague. What does 'here' even mean? You don't even know where you are right now—unless you somehow _do_." Stark raised his brows.

"No, I don't know where I am currently on Earth. We could be in Timbuktu for all I know," Stephen grumbled wearily. _This is going to be exhausting._ "What I meant was that I'm not from this Earth. From this reality."

"This reality," Stark repeated, eyebrows still raised.

Stephen felt his hopes drop at the expression. "I did say it would sound far-fetched," he mumbled.

But Stark waved a hand at him. "No, go on. What do you mean by 'reality'?"

He considered how to answer the question. "Are you familiar with the theory of the multiverse?"

"Yeah, sure. Something of a concept debated by top-level physicists, but better known because of Star Trek and their parallel reality reboots. You know, one universe with William Shatner and the other with Chris Pine."

Stephen blinked at the rambling comment, then decided he didn't have the energy to bother with correcting any of the nuances. "It's real."

Stark quirked his brows upward again. "You got proof of that? I know quite a few physicists who'd have a boner over—"

"_I'm_ proof of it," he interrupted, impatience getting the best of him. "I'm Stephen Strange, but not the one from this reality. I came here entirely by accident and, after discovering what atrocities my—my _other_ self had done, decided I needed to do something about it." He exhaled slowly, carefully, evening out his temperament again. "And I was mostly successful."

"Mostly successful? Do you have another definition of that word in your reality? Because from what I saw, your other you—that's really weird, by the way—completely kicked your ass."

Stephen closed his eyes. "You're incredibly irritating." Maybe not the smartest thing to say in his position, but Stark did say 'honesty', didn't he?

He answered with all sincerity, "I do my best."

A startled laugh escaped Stephen, and he immediately winced as it pulled at something. "Ah—please don't make me laugh."

Stark half-smirked. "I'll do my best there, too." He then sobered to say, "But seriously, what did you mean by 'successful'?"

He supposed telling part of the story wouldn't hurt. "My task, so to speak, was to remove a significant amount of his stolen power sources from him." And to figure out what he was doing and convey it to Wong, but Stark didn't need to know that. "I found where he was keeping the stolen stash of uranium in the fortress. I took it all and hid it. That will delay him for some time."

"Really," said Stark, leaning back in his chair. "And where's the uranium now?"

"Safe from him," was his firm reply.

Stark clearly did not find that answer satisfactory, but did not pursue the subject further for the moment. He pivoted his questioning to, "So you say you're from a different reality. What exactly is your background? What makes you different from the Strange I'm familiar with?"

"I'm not stealing power sources from around the Earth," Stephen mumbled, weariness beginning to engulf him once more.

"I'm serious."

"So am I." He forced his eyes fully open to stare down Stark. "From what research I did, our backgrounds are identical. I don't know why he's… the way he is." _Why Dormammu broke him when he did not break me._ His eyelids felt increasingly heavy.

"Fine, fine," he heard Stark say. "I suppose I'll let you sleep and come back later." He heard him stand, and then his bed was slowly lowered to a fully reclined position once more.

Stephen felt himself begin to fall into a doze, but on the edge of consciousness he realized something vital: he could still feel the Astral Dimension, which was necessary to produce an astral form. Would he be able to do so even in Stark's cuffs?

It was worth a shot. So he concentrated and _pushed_.

And oh, this was so nice. This was really nice. The pain was gone and his head felt much clearer with a bit of distance from his body. He looked down at the metal cuffs on his wrists. Maybe they only worked partially or only on people of Stark's universe—or maybe the inventor had no way to test their functionality and they didn't work on anyone? Stephen considered the idea of testing their effectiveness further at some point in time before shaking his head; that was an idea to ponder over later.

In the meanwhile, he floated through the wall as Stark took the door. He followed the billionaire to another room where a second man was sitting, watching a couple of monitors where… oh, that was his sleeping form. He hadn't noticed cameras, but he supposed they were well-hidden.

"He's asleep?" Stark asked the other man.

"Out like a light." He glanced at the screen which displayed a set of vitals.

"What do you think?"

"His heartbeat remained steady throughout his story. The only time it increased was when he first woke up and when he laughed and complained about pain."

Stephen took a closer look at the man speaking with Stark: middle-aged, dark-skinned, close-cropped hair. His voice was calm and, in a way he couldn't quite determine, authoritative. Stark was also authoritative, but this was a quieter, even more assured sort. He seemed vaguely familiar, but he wasn't sure how.

Stark answered, "Fine, but what do you _think_?"

The other man sighed. "Based on what evidence we have? It seems he was telling the truth."

"But?"

"But I think there's more to his story."

"Of course there is. We only talked for about, what? Five minutes?"

The man gave Stark an exasperated look. "I'm serious, Tony. He didn't seem to be lying when he said he got here by accident, but I think we need more details about him and what his motives are. I don't like that he didn't say where the uranium is now."

Stark nodded. "Neither did I," he admitted. "Think he'll try to use it himself?"

"I don't know," he muttered as he stared at the screens. "I can get a read on people, but it's not exactly my specialty."

Stark pressed his lips together. "We don't currently have access to that _speciality_, Rhodey."

He—Rhodey—raised a brow. "Are you still keeping that act up?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I went to MIT too, you know."

"I do know. You were my babysitter."

"Roommate. And just because I'm not some genius prodigy—"

"That's such a nice thing to say about me, Honey Buns."

"—doesn't mean that I'm an idiot." He nodded towards the monitors. "So if we need _someone_ whose specialty is reading people, I'd have no problem giving this footage to that person."

Stephen was completely lost, but Stark clearly knew what Rhodey meant. The man looked away to stare at another wall as his friend (and good friend, it seemed) waited for him to answer.

Eventually he said, "Not yet. I think it's best this remains between you and me for now, Rhodey. It's too…" He trailed off, and his serious expression lifted as he said, "Is your pun ban done?"

"Stark, it will never be done in this case. If you weren't keeping that guy alive, I would have tossed you out over the Atlantic."

"Come on, Platypus. They were great."

"No, they weren't. They really weren't. And I bet both versions of Strange have heard everything you can come up with from other people."

"I could ask him when he wakes up again."

"I thought we were above using torture."

"My puns are not that bad!"

"Yes they are." Rhodey rose. "I need to eat. As should you. FRIDAY can monitor him for now."

Stark acquiesced and headed to the door. "Sure. She can tell us if he wakes up again or something happens. Got that, FRI?"

Stephen startled as a disembodied female voice replied, "Got it, boss."

The two left the room, closing the door after them. He considered following for a moment before deciding to go back to his body for some actual sleep; while he was within his astral form his body could not fall into the deeper stages of sleep, which would be vital for him to heal.

So Stephen went to his body and eased his way back in; it was not thirty seconds later that he was truly asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So 4 out of 5 chapters are done, but I have to finish this story before November 30th because I need to post a one-shot sequel to this for another square on my bingo card.
> 
> So yeah, I figure an update once every 3-4 days, depending on if I can write as fast as I did in October.
> 
> I'll be posting status updates and deleted scenes for this one [over on tumblrlrlrlr](https://aelaer.tumblr.com/). Feedback is always welcome and appreciated.


	2. Looking at my body feeling miserable

The next time he woke, he was alone. He had no idea what time it was or how long he had slept (or indeed, how long he had been there; he'd not thought to check the time during his projection). What he did know was that he was feeling a lot less groggy, with the painkillers having been weaned off further, and that he was actually hungry. Appetite was a good sign.

Still, he did not actually know how to get someone's attention regarding his hunger. Maybe that—that whatever this FRIDAY was—would alert someone?

He also realized then that he had a catheter. _Of course_ he had a catheter; he had surgery for a good amount of trauma. The real wonder was how he had missed the damn thing the first time, because it was one of the most annoying and discomforting feelings in the world (and if anyone knew anything about discomfort, it was him).

Part of him wished for the grogginess back, if only to negate both the hunger and the catheter.

Stephen sighed softly and looked down at himself carefully. He couldn't actually see anything under the covers, of course, but he could feel the pull of stitches across his left shoulder and upper back, and there was definitely some sort of surgery done around his lower intestines. Maybe they would permit him to look at his charts later.

In the meantime, there was little he could do currently. He exhaled as deeply as he was able to (slowly and carefully) and settled his head against the pillow to wait.

He didn't need to wait long. Within ten minutes, the door opened and the man Stark had called Rhodey walked into the room. Stephen, of course, was not meant to know him, so he remained silent.

He had not noticed in the darkness of the viewing room before, but it appeared this Rhodey had some sort of braces on his legs. His medical mind was instantly curious, but he kept his face blank and his eyes up as the other man approached.

"How are you feeling?" Rhodey asked. He remained standing, resting his hands against the back of one of the chairs.

"As well as can be expected," Stephen answered politely. He was understandably sore, but so long as he didn't move it was tolerable. (And, of course, he was still secured to the bed with cuffs meant to suppress his magic, but there was no need to state the obvious.)

Rhodey nodded. "My name is Colonel James Rhodes. I was with Tony Stark when we found you in Sokovia."

That explained why he was familiar; in this world, he was an Avenger. Stephen inclined his head as much as he could while lying down. "Thank you."

Rhodey (or Rhodes, rather) furrowed his brow. "For?"

"For saving my life."

The surprise was clear on the colonel's face. "You're welcome," he said after a beat. His brow then furrowed again, and he rounded the chair to sit down. "Tony told me your story. It's pretty unbelievable."

"I know," he answered. "But it's the truth."

"I believe you." Stephen's brows shot upward in surprise, and Rhodes continued, "It did help that I saw you fighting, uh, Strange. The Strange we were searching for. It might have been a harder sell otherwise."

"Fair enough," Stephen replied. "I suppose it would've sounded like a lie to me, too, if I had not experienced it." He then fell silent as he determined the best route to not only get some food, but to convince Rhodes to free his hands from the bars (even if the cuffs had to remain) so that he may feed himself.

It turned out he didn't need to go through the effort. "Right," said Rhodes, "so I'm going to be straight with you. The doctor says you're okay to move and that you need to start moving as soon as possible so you don't get bedsores. It's probably best you don't live off an IV any longer, either. So I'm going to unattach these straps from the bed rails. However, if you make any move against me or any of the medical staff, I'll have no problem kicking your ass and tying you down to the bed through the next year."

Stephen was grateful, if only because he did not have to go through being hand fed again; once in a lifetime was one too many times already, and with all the surgeries he had after the accident, he had several lifetimes' worth of the unhappy situation. "I will not harm you, Stark, or any of the staff," he promised. His brow furrowed. "Especially my doctors and nurses. That's a deplorable thought." He'd also do his best to keep his tongue in check if they turned out to be as annoying or idiotic as some of his former coworkers, but neither Rhodes nor Stark struck Stephen as the type to tolerate the type of incompetence he sometimes saw during his residency and as a doctor.

Rhodes was convinced of his honesty (or perhaps wasn't worried about his ability to cause damage; Stephen imagined he looked fairly pathetic) for he was soon up and releasing the straps that connected Stark's high tech cuffs to the bed. The cuffs remained on his wrists, but the doctor expected no less.

He kept his arms still and down on the mattress after the straps were removed. "Thank you," he murmured. Then, to his partial embarrassment, his stomach audibly growled.

The colonel offered a small smirk. "That answers my next question." He gestured with his head towards the door. "The med team is going to check you over and get you moving. I'll have some food brought down in the meantime." Stephen nodded, and as Rhodes straightened the door opened and two rather fit nurses and a doctor he suspected was no slouch herself entered the room. "I'll be back soon." With that he left.

The next fifteen minutes were filled with resignation and pain as the catheter was removed and Stephen was guided out of the bed. He gasped and cursed under his breath as his whole body protested sitting up, then standing up. He clung to both nurses, one on either side of him, as the doctor had him take a couple steps around the room before allowing him back to bed. By the time he was lying down again, cold sweat covered his entire face.

The whole thing was awful and a small part of him wondered if the simplicity of dying was better than going through the motions of rehab—_again_.

_This won't be like last time_, he told himself firmly. He was already walking, for one thing. He just needed a few days. He could do a few days.

Stephen was removed from his thoughts when Rhodes came back into the room, carrying a tray filled with food. His brow rose as the colonel settled the tray on the large overbed table set beside him. His lunch (or dinner, who knew) consisted of a grilled sandwich with lean white chicken slices, arugula, tomatoes, and some sort of creamy aioli spread between slices of whole wheat bread. It came with a bowl of mixed green salad with sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggs, as well as a small bowl of mixed fruit. He had his choice between water and fresh juice to drink.

His stomach rumbled again the moment the scent of the chicken came his way and he carefully maneuvered his hands to grasp the sandwich in a way he was well accustomed to now. He took one, then two more bites before speaking again. "I thought the Metro had mostly decent hospital food, but this hits the ball out of the park."

Rhodes was sitting again, leaning back in the chair and arms crossed loosely over his chest. He offered a smile at the comment. "The cooks here are very good. I don't think you'd find any hospital with the same quality." He then canted his head and narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "You worked at the Metro-General in New York, right?"

He finished half the sandwich probably too quickly and forced himself to slow down. "Yeah. As did my counterpart." He carefully grabbed the cup of water and supported it with both hands to take a drink.

The colonel waited for him to lower the cup again. "Until the car accident," Rhodes said.

Stephen paused and looked at his right hand. "Yes," he answered evenly. "And as I told Stark when I was last awake, from what research I've been able to do here, my counterpart's history is identical to mine; I don't know why he's made the choice to commit these crimes." _There has to be something that's different in my history here that changed me—something that I'm missing._

"How long have you been here?" he asked.

It took a moment for him to remember the date; much of his time in this reality Stephen had categorized as Before Finding Wong and After Finding Wong as opposed to using actual weeks. "Uh, about three months." He avoided attempting to use a fork and thus the salad for now; the cup was difficult enough to maneuver. He similarly ignored the fork with the mixed fruits and instead carefully curled his fingers around a grape in the bowl before plopping it into his mouth. In his peripheral vision, he noticed Rhodes was careful to keep his expression even and his eyes mostly directed to his face rather than his hands; Stephen appreciated it.

"That's a long time," said Rhodes, "longer than I expected." An unspoken question lingered there.

Stephen wasn't entirely sure what the unspoken question was; lethargy was crawling up from the corners of his mind. He could feel weariness starting to settle over his whole body again, and _dammit, he wasn't finished eating yet._ He at least wanted to finish his sandwich.

He tried to maneuver his hands to grab the second half of the sandwich, but his body was having none of it. Stephen exhaled in frustration, then remembered he had yet to answer Rhodes. He settled with saying, "It took a while to find Strange."

The colonel probably saw his exhaustion, for he pushed the bed tray off to the side and pressed the button to lower the bed into a more reclined position. "You'll have to tell me _how_ you got here in the first place, some time."

"Guess is as good as mine," Stephen mumbled. "Cauldron wasn't s'posed to do that."

He missed whatever expression Rhodes shot him at that statement, as well as missed the opportunity to see where the colonel went after in his astral form, because his healing body grabbed greedily onto his consciousness and he quickly fell asleep.

* * *

When Stephen woke again, he realized he needed to piss. Badly.

_Shit._

(_No pun intended_, said that snarky corner of his mind.)

The lights in his room were turned low, so he assumed it was some form of night, or that they expected him to sleep for some time. Perhaps someone was still watching him.

He didn't want to risk wasting time in his astral form to see if anyone was in the monitoring room; instead he found the button on the side of the bed that raised his position and held it down as he looked for a call button.

From what he could see, there was none.

"Dammit," he muttered under his breath. _What sort of fucking hospital room didn't have a call button?_

_Maybe one made for a prisoner,_ said an irritated part of his mind in return, but even nurses and doctors needed to call people quickly. Did the personnel have some sort of other communication device? Stephen couldn't remember, and frankly put, he had more important things to consider at that moment.

Like how he was going to get to the bathroom sequestered in the corner and about a dozen steps away from his bed.

He eyed his surroundings again and quickly focused on an IV pole beside the bed. It was no longer in use, but it would make do as a support quite well.

His hands were annoyingly shaking more fervently than usual as he found and pressed the button that lowered the bed rails (convenient), then reached over and rolled the pole to his side. Now all he needed to do was turn his body, plant his feet on the floor, and take a dozen steps to the toilet.

Easy. This was going to be easy.

By the time he had had his feet on the floor, beads of sweat were beginning to gather on his brow and he was entirely unsure how much longer his body could hold on in more than one sense of the word.

He gritted his teeth; he was Doctor Stephen Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts and Guardian of the New York Sanctum, and he would be damned before he let something as trivial as a bodily function get the best of him. He grabbed the IV pole as firmly as he could in his right hand, ignoring the pain that shot up his wrist and forearm at the force, inhaled deeply, then exhaled as he brought himself to his feet. His left hand latched onto the pole as he steadied himself. The pain in his left shoulder, abdomen, and hands were firmly ignored as he began to put one shaky foot forward.

By the third step, he wasn't sure if he was going to make it before his legs gave out.

By the fifth step, he was pretty certain he was going to collapse in the next two steps, but at this point he was ready to crawl (with all the good that would do, which was no good at all—but he was too stubborn to turn back at this point. There was probably a sliver of more dignity in being found in one's own urine trying to crawl to the bathroom than being found in a bed covered in it. Not much dignity—very little, to be frank—but he had little to lose at this point in this rather miserable experience).

As his leg really began to buckle uncontrollably after step six, there was suddenly someone at his side taking up most of his body weight, and a quiet, "I've got you. Keep going, you're almost there," helped spur him forward.

Then he was in the bathroom and the toilet and at that moment he had never been so grateful to be in a pantsless hospital gown in his entire life.

It was only after he was finished and he was making his way (being half-carried) to the sink that his weary mind realized that the person at his side was Tony Stark.

The water came on as he stuck his heavily trembling hands under the faucet. Stark held him steady. The soap dispenser was automatic, too; small mercies. Stephen took the time washing his hands to gather back some strength.

When he had enough energy to speak, he muttered, "I didn't realize you were also a nurse in this universe."

"Found it helped build character," Stark retorted, but the tone was easy and non-judgemental.

Stephen swallowed and finally removed his hands from the water. Stark was ready with a towel. Stephen grabbed it and carefully padded his hands dry, but otherwise his usual, ready retorts were shoved away by the humiliating situation tempered by sheer exhaustion.

Stark filled in the silence. His light tone held a key of seriousness that Stephen could not quite explain. "I took it up after Rhodey got paralyzed. Not full time or even part time, but sometimes he needed a friend and for whatever reason he doesn't blame me, though I'm partially to blame for all of it. I have no idea why I'm telling you this. Are you ready to walk again?"

He blinked, at a loss for words. "Yes," he finally answered, and he grabbed the IV pole as Stark helped him back to bed. When Stephen was laying down again and had recovered his breath, he said, "I was looking for a call button to get a nurse. Where are they?"

"One's asleep and I told the other to take a lunch break. Midnight snack. Whatever." Stephen remembered Stark's words to Rhodes about keeping knowledge of his presence here on the down low, and so did not ask about the limited number of nurses.

Stark continued, "As for call buttons, we don't have them. I meant to tell you next time you woke up about FRIDAY, but I thought you'd sleep longer. Should've known better—doctors are supposed to be the most difficult patients, aren't they?"

"Funny," Stephen grumbled. "This may come as a surprise to you, but even doctors have only so much control over involuntary bodily functions."

"Like I said, difficult." Stark settled in the chair beside the bed. "Anyway, there's no call buttons because FRIDAY's here. She's an AI of sorts, helps run the place. Say hi, FRIDAY."

"Hello," came a female voice from the general direction of the ceiling (at least, he thought it was the ceiling, but he couldn't say he trusted his senses much currently). It was the same voice that he heard during his projection.

"She was the one who alerted me that you were awake. I was closer than the nurse, anyway. But you can ask her to get someone if you need assistance at any time."

"Useful," he admitted. "She sounds like a very advanced AI."

"The most advanced in the world," Stark answered, and the pride and fondness he had for his creation was clear in his tone. It was interesting and not quite what Stephen expected (though, if he were to be completely honest with himself, he wouldn't say he knew what his expectations of this reality's Stark actually _were_).

He shifted his position on the mattress, grimacing at the pull of the stitches. That reminded him. "Could I please see my charts? I would like to get an idea of the damage."

"I think you're supposed to be sleeping," he said, but reached over towards a counter against the wall and grabbed a thin tablet. He tapped it for a moment before handing it to Stephen.

He grabbed the tablet with both hands and eyed the damage. It was definitely not great, but it also could have been worse. There was no doubt he would have died without medical assistance, anyway.

"It seems I'm in your debt," he murmured as he handed the tablet back to him.

Stark shifted and looked to the side. "It's what anyone would do," he answered, brushing the words away in a manner that left Stephen bemused. "So, as you saw, you're going to need some more time to recover. Is there anything you want while you're stuck in bed? We have an extensive movie library."

"I prefer reading," Stephen answered. "Nonfiction books and articles are preferred, but I will read anything."

"Done. Anything else?"

He looked down at himself. "Some clothing would be nice." He imagined his robes were completely destroyed in the fight. At this point of time, though, he'd really like a pair of sweats to wear.

"That can be done, too. I'll have it to you in the morning."

Stephen nodded, then asked, "What time is it, anyway?"

Stark glanced down at his watch. "A bit after two."

"Rather a late hour to be awake."

He shrugged. "I don't sleep much."

His mouth got ahead of his brain. "Not very good for your health."

"Hey, I'm not the one currently stuck in bed after nearly dying," Stark retorted.

Stephen squinted at him in the dim light, but honestly couldn't get a good read on his face. "This was not self-inflicted."

"Well, when you think about it, it actually _was_."

It took him half a moment to get it, and then he groaned. "You know what I mean."

Stark smirked, then stood up once more. "I'm going to leave you to sleep before a nurse comes in and chases me out. I'll be back in the morning with presents for you."

* * *

The next time he woke up, there was a tablet sitting on the bedside table. It took three frustratingly slow minutes of careful maneuvering into a seated position, both feet planted on the floor, before he could comfortably reach over with both hands to grab it. After carefully shuffling back into bed, he turned his full attention to the tablet and began to explore his options.

Ten minutes later, he concluded that it had not only all the reading material he could possibly ever want, but an extensive library of movies, TV shows, and games too.

Well. That helped the boredom problem.

He didn't see Stark or Rhodes throughout the day, but his doctor—a woman of Asian descent that had introduced herself as Doctor Cho—and the two nurses were readily present after he ate breakfast. Once they helped him wash up and change into a pair of sweats and a loose t-shirt, they proceeded to make his life absolute hell.

Stephen of all people knew the importance of physical therapy when recovering from a traumatic injury. He had not only the knowledge from his field of study, but the very, very unfortunate practical experience that lasted for months after the car crash. This didn't stop him from silently cursing out the medical staff with every twinge of pain they forced upon his person with the maneuvers they had him perform.

By the time he was finished, he was utterly exhausted. He _had_ planned on exploring wherever he was on the astral plane after their visit, but his injured body had other ideas. Before he could so much as remember his original plans, he was already asleep.

When Stephen woke up again, the lights were once more dimmed in his room. He groaned softly and asked himself, "Did I sleep all day?"

"For the most part," a pleasant, feminine voice answered, and he stared up at the ceiling in surprise.

"You are called FRIDAY?" he asked tentatively.

"That is correct, Doctor Strange."

He cleared his throat. "Could you tell me the time, please?"

"It is six thirty-eight PM local time."

He should consider asking about dinner. But while she (it?) was chatty, he could perhaps get a couple more answers. "How long have I been here?"

There was a brief pause. "You were brought here in the late evening, or the early hours of the morning, three days ago. Sixty-five hours and twelve minutes, to be exact."

So he lost about a day. Considering how wounded he was, that made sense. Still, he was certain that in another twenty-four hours he would be able to walk the short distance to the bathroom without need of the IV pole for balance (though if he were to be honest with himself, he did not plan on abandoning it for at least another two days).

"I don't suppose you can tell me _where_ we are?" he asked, again looking upwards.

A brief silence followed. Eventually she answered, "You are in the United States."

Well, he guessed that was _something_. Stephen softly exhaled and reached to his hip where he had set the tablet so he didn't have to stretch over to the table. He turned it on and browsed through it until he found a recent neurosurgical study he had yet to read.

He was some fifteen minutes into the periodical when the door opened and Stark came in, bearing a food-laden tray. "FRIDAY told me you were up," he said in greeting.

"I'm not surprised," Stephen answered, "but I admit I wasn't expecting you to bring me dinner."

"I have to wait for some things to be analyzed before moving forward in my current project, and Rhodey's in DC for the next few days. So I figured I'd see how you're doing."

He narrowed his eyes a bit. "About the same as I was yesterday."

Stark set the tray down and Stephen frowned a bit at its contents. Stew. There was no way he was handling a spoon while anyone else was in the room (if at all; he knew there were cameras). So he took a chunk of bread and moved his hands under the overbed table so he could slowly work on breaking it apart to dunk in the stew.

In the meantime, Stark made himself comfortable again in one of the bedside chairs. "Hey, just trying to be friendly." He then picked up the tablet and glanced over the text. He raised his brows. "You weren't kidding about nonfiction. I'm going to have to actually Google a couple of these words; I don't remember the last time I did that."

"It isn't exactly an article written in layman terms," he retorted dryly.

"I'm not what you'd usually call a layman in most things," Stark said back. "But give me a couple days and I should be able to talk neurosurgeon."

Stephen shot him a bemused look. "Why would you want to do that?"

He shrugged. "Why not? Something else I can talk about."

He gave the engineer a bit of a look. "I don't need you to entertain me while I recover. The tablet is sufficient."

"Who said this is about entertaining _you_?" Stark retorted. Before he could form an answer to that, Stark quickly continued, "Do you play chess?"

Stephen's brow furrowed. "Not for some time, but I know how to play."

"Good; I'm always wanting to play and can never get anyone to sit down long enough with me to do it. Or well, anyone who I won't beat in about ten moves. And then they never play with me again." He set the tablet down on an empty part of the bed tray; on the screen was a chessboard, white side towards Stephen.

"You're giving me the opening advantage?" he asked.

Stark shrugged. "I always do."

"Very well." He tapped the pawn in front of the queen and moved it forward to begin the game.

He ended up eating as they played, dunking the torn chunks of bread in the stew between his turns and managing to sop up plenty of the stew's contents without making a huge mess all over himself. That in itself was a win. It seemed Stark was spending plenty of time concentrating on his own moves rather than his opponent's quivering grasp, which was another win in his private playbook.

They spent the next hour in careful study over the virtual chessboard, passing the occasional quip and competitive snark between their moves. As they played, Stephen felt a tightness in his chest he had not really noticed ease a little, and he breathed a little easier. If it weren't for the cuffs, he may have even believed he was playing a match with a new acquaintance who could turn into a friend.

But the reality of his situation lingered in the back of his mind even with the quips and good-natured ribbing, and the tightness did not fully dissipate.

Near the end of the hour, Stark ended the game with, "Checkmate." Stephen narrowed his eyes at the board and realized that, of course, he was right. "Good game, though," the engineer continued blithely on. "You gave me a little bit of a challenge. That was definitely one of the longest-lasting games I've played."

"Rematch tomorrow," was Stephen's reply. At Stark's raised eyebrows, he added, "I haven't played chess in well over a decade. Give me a day to read up on it and I think I can give you a game worth your time."

Stark smirked. "If you say so, Doc." He took the food tray and stood up. "Don't feel bad when I end up beating you again, though. I haven't been beaten since my MIT days."

"I will be gentle, then, when I win tomorrow," was Stephen's easy retort. Stark's smirk only widened at that.

"I look forward to you trying." With that, he turned and left the room. The lights then dimmed and Stephen looked upward at the ceiling with some exasperation, but took it for what it was worth and lowered his bed into a reclining position once more. It did not take long for him to fall asleep soon after.


	3. Leave the body and my soul

The next day the sutures near his left shoulder blade were removed, which completely surprised Stephen. He immediately asked Doctor Cho (who turned out to be quite intelligent) about the shorter time frame.

"I thought they would remain for at least another four days," he said as he gingerly removed the loose t-shirt he was wearing.

"Stark Industries has, especially the last two years, poured more resources into their medical tech division," she answered while cleaning the site with an antiseptic cloth. "One of their first bits of innovation is the material we used to stitch the laceration across your shoulder. It's proven to have as low of an infection rate as skin closure tape, but with the precision of stitches." Doctor Cho picked up her forceps and scissors and began to snip off the knots and pull the sutures out; he could feel the slight tug of the individual stitches. "Plus, something within its makeup seems to help the skin in more shallow lacerations, such as this one here, bind more quickly—and so you get these off in half the time."

Stephen was, of course, incredibly intrigued. "It's only used for how shallow of lacerations?"

"Only down to the dermis; if the laceration reaches the subcutaneous tissue, it's not speeding up the healing process and its earlier removal proves more detrimental in those cases. And unlike normal sutures, these ones can't go into the shower after forty-eight hours."

"Not that I've been able to stand long enough for a shower," Stephen muttered.

He could sense the understanding in Doctor Cho's tone in her next words. "There's a bench in the shower. I believe you should try today. One of the nurses can assist you, if needed."

"Noted," he sighed as he felt the last suture pulled out. "I'm surprised I haven't read about this new suture material yet in any of the journals I've read the last couple days."

"S.I. has yet to publish their material on it. All of our numerous studies are scheduled to be published early next year."

Stephen stilled in surprise; if S.I. had yet to make a formal announcement about the new material, it was very possible Doctor Cho was under a rather strict NDA.

She seemed to note the change in his demeanour, for she quickly followed up with, "Mr Stark has given me explicit permission to tell you about all aspects regarding your recovery, including parts using the newest in S.I.'s medical research."

That made him pause. As Doctor Cho applied a long adhesive strip across the healing skin of his shoulder, he eventually said, "That's… unusually open for an inventor of something like this."

"Mr Stark is an unusual man," she replied. "I'm finished. Did you want to attempt to shower?"

He sighed. "I suppose I best get the attempt over with."

* * *

The attempt was, in a word, inglorious. It was also incredibly draining, and by the time he was done with it, he was so exhausted that he fell asleep yet again. When he woke up in the early afternoon still feeling a bit groggy, Stephen decided to forego his astral explorations once again and see how he was feeling the next morning.

Besides, he was in no particular rush for information when his body was still too weak to do anything with it. On top of that, he had told Stark that he would challenge him in the match this evening and he still had plenty of reading to do.

So Stephen spent the next few hours refreshing his memory on chess strategies, both common and uncommon, and taking the time to carefully index them within his brain so the information would be easy to draw upon later. It was a memorization method that he used for studying both medical and mystical texts.

(Stephen also used this method to remember every English album in existence, though he was a couple years behind on his mental song library. He needed to start that once more. It did beg the question as to whether all of his favorite musicians actually existed in this reality, and he knew exactly what he was going to be doing tomorrow once he was done exploring in his astral form.)

When Stark came in that evening (and again with his meal; that was… nice of him, he guessed. More puzzling than anything), he felt he was ready to give him a proper rematch. Stephen already had the game up on the tablet to pull up the moment the other man mentioned it.

This time the game took over two hours compared to last night's one, and the banter and quips that surrounded the first game were all but absent in this match. Stark was clearly spending more energy on his strategy than his witty repertoire, and Stephen spent an equal amount of concentration remembering everything he learned the last few hours to keep ahead and block his opponent's future moves as he saw them.

It was just over the two hour mark and after Stephen made another move that they came to a draw.

"What?" Stephen asked, his mind leaving hypothetical scenarios to focus again on Stark.

"We're at a draw. I only have one viable move," and here he moved his rook, "and with that you only have three moves. Each move set ends with me finishing at a draw."

He took the time to study the virtual chessboard and found that Stark was very much correct. While there were other moves Stark could make in two of the scenarios, each would lead to Stephen's victory, leaving his opponent's best move towards a draw.

"So I see," he replied, then allowed himself a slight smirk. "I did say I was going to offer you a proper challenge."

"You didn't disappoint! I haven't played a two-hour game since I challenged the chess club at MIT." Stark looked quite happy with the turnout, too. "I could even play white tomorrow, if you're up for the challenge."

"Of course I am," said Stephen. He then shot him a bit of a look. "Still need my company for your entertainment, then?" he asked, piggybacking on his comment from last night.

Stark fiddled with the tablet and kept his eyes upon it as he answered. "Mhm. And you're mostly stuck to the bed making it rather convenient for me."

And confined to the room; Stephen heard the door latch decisively shut every time others left. But he did not address that head on and rather sidestepped it by saying, "I won't be stuck to the bed for much longer."

Stark made a noise in acknowledgment. "Yeah, you're coming along quickly. Maybe another week for what stitches you still have."

Stephen sent him a bit of a look. "The exact status of my health should be confidential. Doctor-patient privilege."

"Oh, don't worry, Doctor Cho has told me nothing that breaches HIPAA," he reassured him, which did nothing to reassure Stephen at all. Doctor Cho's professionalism meant nothing if Stark had complete access to the servers his files were on and if he lacked the scruples necessary to keep his curiosity in check. He honestly wasn't sure; while the man was easy for him to read, many of his actions remained enigmatic to him.

He just needed more time to figure him out, and at the moment, time was very much in abundance.

* * *

After breakfast and physio, Stephen finally felt he had enough energy to sustain his astral protection for a great enough distance to explore his surroundings for some time. And so he went back to bed, closed his eyes, and as his heart rate slowed he released himself from the physical plane.

First he explored his immediate surroundings. He found he was in some sort of medical and rehabilitation center. His own room was one of the few underground patient rooms, while the rest of the basement contained various labs and storage rooms. On the ground floor was a large gym with physical therapy equipment, larger offices, more patient rooms, a couple operating rooms, and a cafeteria.

And in the cafeteria was his doctor sitting with Stark. He immediately floated over to them to eavesdrop.

Stark was talking. "... news is that she's showing brain activity still. She's been steady there."

"That is good," said Doctor Cho. "Has there been any developments from the doctors in Wakanda?"

"Not yet; they're still researching it, though they're certain it's what causing the continued coma. An anomaly, I think they called it." He stirred a fork about his pasta salad without actually taking a bite. "Still, their work is far more advanced than anything I've ever seen in US hospitals."

"Who would've thought?" said Cho.

Stephen's brow furrowed at their words. Wakanda? Wasn't that some poor African country? He let that thought trail off and instead considered the coma patient. That had to be the S.I. CEO and Stark's fiance, the one his counterpart had attacked during his theft of the company's arc reactors.

He frowned to himself; he didn't realize she was still in a coma. Perhaps it was not only from natural causes, considering the source. Perhaps it wasn't a natural injury at all. That was really something to consider, and a part of him thrilled at the idea of being able to study how magic affects the brain and, more importantly, how one could repair it.

But that was for another time. Stark and Cho were now talking politics, and he didn't know how much time his body would allow him to keep his astral form. He left them and ascended to the higher levels of the building to see if there was anything noteworthy.

There were a couple more labs, conference rooms, bedrooms for onsite staff, offices, and all the other trappings of a well-funded research hospital. It was much smaller than most hospitals he knew, though, and the amount of people within the building was at a bare minimum. It was weird.

Time to explore the area surrounding the building. He flew up through the ceiling and the roof to get his first look outside.

The medical center his body was in turned out to only be one building among over a dozen in an impressive collection of architecture. He could see what appeared to be a very large hanger—military, then—as well as a cluster of buildings sitting on the edge of a large lake. Beyond the manicured lawns and modern structures were tall, giant forests, and across the water in the north was a range of low, green mountains.

Just a look at his outside surroundings without further exploration narrowed down his likely location significantly. The sheer presence of hills completely abolished all the Great Plains states, and the amount of greenery negated all the dry heat states in the southwest. The mountains were too low to be in California or any of the Rocky Mountains states. While there were some areas in the western United States that fit his surroundings, he found it more likely that he was somewhere on the eastern seaboard, or at least east of the Mississippi.

Time to go higher. He rose up into the clear blue sky, half-wishing he could feel the sun upon his face, then looked back down at the buildings below.

He blinked as he stared down at a giant grey _A_ on top of a long, narrow building. He immediately recognized it as the symbol for the Avengers in this reality. And as Stephen searched his memory, it all came together a few seconds later.

He was being kept at the Avengers Compound.

His brow furrowed in thought. Unlike his own reality where the Avengers were headquartered in DC, he remembered that the compound was somewhere in upstate New York. Beyond that, however, he didn't have a clue.

He looked along the shore of the large lake with a frown. He rarely went upstate and there were thousands of bodies of water in the northern areas of New York. Narrowing his location down further would be challenging.

Still, he wasn't exactly one to turn down a challenge. So Stephen headed westward to follow the curvature of the lake and see if there were any other signs of life.

A few minutes later his eyes narrowed and he dived down to get a better look at the lake shore. When he got closer, he found that he had come upon a waste weir and spillway.

So not a lake, but a reservoir. That… didn't exactly narrow things down, but it was very possible this was one of the many reservoirs that gave water to New York City, so he figured it couldn't be too far upstate. In the end, he still had more knowledge than he did beforehand.

While he desired to explore further, he felt the beginning of a fatigue that echoed his healing body, and he was some distance away from the Compound. He held off from pushing himself too far for now; there was no urgent need and he could satisfy his curiosity later.

A few minutes later he was back in his body and, despite not really wanting to sleep yet again, his mending body overruled him and he fell into a doze.

* * *

When one of the nurses came in with dinner, Stephen hardly acknowledged him. The nurse set the tray on the overbed table and after a quick "Eat while it's hot!" left the room.

Stephen ignored it. He continued his obsessive perusal of the tablet, shaky fingers managing to become steady enough to click link after link after link.

Stark came in an hour later and the tray was still untouched. He quirked his brows up. "Y'know Doc, if you don't eat, Doctor Cho is going to be very stern with you and you'll feel terrible after that."

He raised his head from the tablet at the sound of Stark's voice, blinking. "What?" He then looked at the tray of food. "Oh… right. I forgot that was brought in." He looked at the now stone-cold chicken and broccoli with a small grimace.

"I'll have them make you another plate. Send that info up, FRI." Stark sunk into one of the chairs beside the bed. "What has you so distracted, anyway?"

Stephen turned the tablet around to show him his screen, which had a list of all the _Billboard_ Hot 100 and _Billboard_ 200 for all genres in 2011. "I only considered yesterday that there might be differences in music between my reality and this one. A check to see if my favorite artists existed here turned into something of a full day project."

Stark was clearly interested. "No kidding. Did you find any differences?"

"Dozens. In some ways it's amazing that it's only that many across hundreds of artists and songs, but I cannot imagine _not_ having Rocky's training montage paired with 'Eye of the Tiger.' "

"I know I've seen a couple of those films, but I couldn't tell you the name of any training song off the top of my head," he said. "But I'd probably remember a song with that name."

Stephen nodded. "Exactly! I can live without the 'Macarena' and 'Kung Fu Fighting', but that song made that sequence legendary."

Stark's lips twitched in amusement. "I'll take your word for it. Anything particularly good from your reality that you found missing?"

"I'm still debating if losing all of Journey's discography is worth never having to hear 'Don't Stop Believing' again."

"Decent song overplayed until you loathed it?"

"Yup." He thought for a moment. "Three one hit wonders that don't exist at all in your world are 'Tubthumping', 'Funkytown', and 'Who Let the Dogs Out.' "

"Tub-_what_?"

"It's a song about drinking."

Stark flashed a grin. "Sounds like my type of song."

He huffed in amusement, then continued, "'Take On Me' does exist, but it never got beyond a smaller following because they didn't have the unique music video my reality has, which made it a household name."

"'Take On Me'?" Stark asked as he pulled out his phone. "By who?"

"A-ha. Letter a, dash, h-a."

Stark entered it into the search and then brought up a YouTube video with the song playing over a still image of the album. When he pressed play, an electronic beat synonymous with 80s pop music echoed around them.

"Yeah, that's it," Stephen said. "Did you find any music video?"

"It doesn't look like this song has one. That must have been one hell of a music video."

"It's very creative with rather high production values for its time," he assured him, then looked back at his own tablet as Stark cut the music. "I was really happy to see that both Kurt Cobain and Tupac are still alive. Awful to read about Axl Rose, though."

"Wait, wait," Stark said. "What the hell happened to Kurt Cobain and Tupac in your reality?"

He pressed his lips together. "Suicide and assassination, respectively. Both in the mid-90s."

Stark frowned. "Well that's… awful. Your reality missed some of their best work, too."

"I plan on listening to it soon."

"I'm sure," Stark said. "But actually, what I really want to know is what artists you saw in your search that you _didn't_ recognize."

"My Chemical Romance," he started as he read off the tablet. "Bruno Mars, though with all the top hits he has, I'll remedy that soon. Uh, a long-running band called AC/DC—"

"Wait, wait," Stark interrupted. "Are you telling me that your reality doesn't have AC/DC?"

"That's what I just said," he answered dryly.

Stark pulled up his phone again. "Okay, I'm making an executive decision right now. We're not doing chess tonight, because you're about to be introduced to one of the greatest bands of all time, and we have 16 studio albums to go through."

Stephen could not help but be amused by his enthusiasm; it was certainly reminiscent of his own. "I don't have a choice in the matter?"

"Absolutely not. So first, I'll start with some of their more famous songs…"

* * *

He was surrounded by a pitch black darkness highlighted by sickly neon greens, pinks, and oranges. He knew this atmosphere very well, but what Stephen did not know was _why_ he was once again in the Dark Dimension. There was a blankness in his recent history that left him uncertain and afraid.

Stephen looked down at himself: he was dressed in his usual wear, and once again he had the Eye of Agamotto, leaving him with at least a chance of survival. And it looked like he had already applied a time loop, though he could not remember when that had happened.

Surely there was no need to confront Dormammu right then and there, with all his recent memories gone and he could just fly out—it looked like he had the Cloak of Levitation with him again—though something seemed off about that. Why was that off? He wasn't sure. He wasn't sure of anything at all.

He needed to get his bearings, he needed to figure things out before going any further, and so he indicated to the cloak that they needed to go, but it was not listening—and it was not listening because he could see now that it was scarred with permanent magical burns that had seared it, left it unresponsive, outright killed it, and he had been trying to find a cure for the cloak for months, so why was he wearing it—

And before he could think any further, two great eyes lit with lava fields of violent purple that burned with white and blue fire came in from above him, first filling his vision and then every cell down to his very soul with a searing pain of magma and fire that utterly consumed him without any foreseeable end to his suffering—

A voice in his head cried, "_C'mon, Strange_," but it did not sound completely like his voice, and it was certainly not Dormammu's voice. It faded into nothingness as another wave of fire overwhelmed his entire being, but then it came to the forefront of his mind again, saying, "_Strange… Stephen. Stephen, you're okay. You need to wake up._"

Wake up.

He needed to _wake up_.

His eyes shot open and he gasped for air with his waking breath. He couldn't get the cool air into his burning insides fast enough. Through his heavy breathing, he heard quiet reassurances. "... just breathe, Stephen. You're safe. It was just a dream. Just breathe."

He turned his eyes to the side and saw Tony Stark had pulled the chair as close to his bedside as was possible. Behind him was a nurse looking at a tablet with a concerned frown.

A wave of embarrassment washed over him at being caught in such a predicament. "I'm fine," he gasped, not quite able to look at Stark and directing his words to the nurse instead. "Just a—just a dream. I'm fine."

The nurse looked a bit unconvinced, but Stark took a quick look at his vitals and waved the nurse off with, "I've got this," which only made Stephen's stomach churn in discomfort. Why was he here? Why wasn't Stark going? Couldn't the man see he was perfectly fine?

"Take a deep breath for me, Stephen. Your breathing is still too fast."

So it was. He forced himself to ignore Stark and focus on slowing his breathing to something approaching normal. It took a few minutes, but eventually he got his heart rate under control, and it was only then that the nurse actually left. Stark was still there, however, for reasons he could not begin to fathom.

Also, there was another thing. "Are we on a first-name basis, now?" he asked, steering the topic to something that wasn't his night terror.

Stark shrugged. "Well, I've been thinking of 'Strange' as the asshole who keeps stealing stuff, so 'Stephen' is less antagonistic in my head." He then frowned and muttered, "And complicated, but that fits here too, so I guess that works." He quickly moved on and added in a normal voice, "I prefer Tony, anyway, so yeah, it's a first-name basis."

"Fair enough," he mumbled, but Stark—or Tony, he supposed—wasn't done talking.

"You thirsty? You probably are." He stood up and walked over to a filled pitcher of water on the sideboard. "We talked for ages about music until the nurse kicked me out. Still a bit trippy, the whole mostly-the-same-but-with-significant-differences music history thing. We didn't even get to classical. Do you have Mozart and Beethoven and such?"

Stephen had to think a little bit for a reply, and he fully blamed the nightmare on that. "Uh—yeah, they're in my world. Bach, Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi. I think uh, most history is pretty consistent through WWII. I think after that is where the branch happens. If you review enough history and culture in both realities, you'll eventually find the year things started changing and find the first anomaly from there."

Stark—no, he did say he preferred Tony, so it was something to remember—came back with a large cup halfway filled. Stephen took it and noticed his hands were trembling more than they usually did; his body was _still_ working its way down from the dream. Irritating. So irritating. It's not like it was anything new. Dormammu was a constant presence that he had learned to control, to keep it to something he only needed to deal with on occasion, but he feared it would always be a demon that lurked within his subconscious; currently it emerged in his dreams from time to time. _It wasn't new._

"Hey, Earth to Stephen." He blinked and looked at St—Tony. "You didn't hear a word I just said, did you?"

He had not. "Sorry," Stephen said. "Just—lost in thought."

Tony shifted and looked just to the right of Stephen as he said, "Did you, uh, want to… talk about it?" He rambled quickly onward. "I mean, I'm pretty shitty at the whole therapy thing and I'm the last person on Earth you'd want as a counselor, but I can listen, mostly. Sort of. I'm better at talking but I'm capable of listening, is what I'm saying, if I feel like it. Not that I super feel like it right now, but I mean I can, if you need to, is what I mean. And don't lie to me if you do need it because I'm actually offering it."

His clear discomfort at the whole idea of playing therapist matched Stephen's recalcitrance at reminiscing on anything about Dormammu, though Tony's display helped his body relax further. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Oh thank God."

Stephen snorted loudly at the reply. "A nurse but not a therapist."

"Don't get me wrong, I totally encourage the healthy 'talking it out' approach. Just not with me."

"I'll keep that in mind," he replied dryly. Focusing on the cup then, Stephen slowly brought it to his lips. As his hands continued to shake, and with the dream still so present in his mind, he could not help but remember the last time the cloak steadied his sore hands as the days grew colder and it became harder to grasp things, and an ache he had successfully buried for months woke anew.

From the corner of his eye he caught Tony giving him an odd look. Stephen turned to him fully and raised a brow. "What?"

Tony, in turn, frowned a little. "What?" he repeated.

"You were giving me a strange look."

"... was that meant to be a pun of some sort?"

Stephen rolled his eyes. "No. It's just a word."

"How can you use the word 'strange' without it being a pun?"

"Maybe the same way you could use the adjective 'stark'."

"Yeah, but that word's not nearly as common."

He huffed in exasperation. "Stop avoiding the question. Why were you looking at me like that?"

Tony glanced to the side momentarily. "I thought we were avoiding touchy-feely talk."

Stephen blinked. "How on Earth was that look you gave me in any way 'touchy-feely'?"

He groaned and looked up at the ceiling in exasperation. "Jesus Christ. I just noticed you looked ridiculously sad for like one second and wondered what the fuck that was about. That's all."

Sad? Where had he gotten that impre—

Oh. Right.

Stephen cleared his throat. "It's uh, it's a little hard to explain."

"I thought you weren't going to talk about your dream."

"No, no, it's not that. For the most part, at least." And dammit, now Tony looked curious. He sighed and placed the cup aside, then leaned back. He supposed he could share a bit about the Cloak, so long as he kept all talk concerning Kamar-Taj out of it. He didn't want the man knowing about the order, not at this time. Maybe later, but definitely not now.

Tony was now looking very closely at him, and he sighed once more. Where to begin? Perhaps with an explanation of what the Cloak was.

"In the mystic arts there are items that are called relics. They sometimes hold powers that a person cannot, are used as tools to better refine certain magics, or are otherwise imbued with properties that are not considered natural occurrences within the norms of this—or my own—universe."

"Properties like what?" Tony asked.

"Interdimensional properties that are simply not found in this universe. Several of these properties can give a relic some form of sentience, for instance."

Tony stared. "Everything in me is shouting 'bullshit' at that." His mouth remained half-open, as if he wanted to carry on further, but he ended his comment there.

Stephen shrugged. "With the mystic arts, it's best to forget everything you think you know about the world around you." He spoke on before Tony could inquire further, saying, "About a year after my accident, I was trying to get a better grasp on my newly-acquired powers when uh, things happened. And for whatever reason, a relic came to me."

Tony stared at him, eyes narrowed. "There's more holes in that story than swiss cheese."

"The things that happened are not really relevant to the story that I'm trying to tell now."

"Beyond that. For instance, how did you get these powers in the first place?"

Stephen shot him a polite smile. "I thought you'd understand that by its purposeful omission I was not going to speak upon that topic."

He huffed in soft irritation. "I know you went to Kathmandu. Your doppelganger's trail ends there. There's enough mystic mumbo jumbo in Nepal that, considering this stuff _does_ exist, one of those places has to be the real deal. And I'll find it. Eventually."

"Good luck," he offered.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Fine. Then tell me this: what the hell is 'a relic came to me' supposed to mean?"

"It means exactly that. I wasn't joking about sentience. And this relic in particular had it in spades; there are not many that have distinct personalities, but the Cloak was something else."

He lightly frowned at him. "Yeah, sure. So sentient cloak."

"Sentient cloak," he affirmed. "Officially called the Cloak of Levitation for the exact reasons you would suspect. It's difficult to describe the Cloak's form of sentience; in some ways you could describe it as a cat or dog, and in others ways like a young child, but at other times it would remind me more of an elder, a mentor, or even a caregiver. And I learned quickly that I did not need to speak with it for the Cloak to understand my desires."

Tony raised both brows very high. "_Desires?_" he asked, drawing out the word in a suggestive manner. "I mean—"

"Do _not_ even start," Stephen interrupted, frowning. "That is—no. What is _wrong_ with you?"

"Nothing! I mean, so long as everything was consensual—"

"For fuck's sake! I meant things like what direction to fly in and steadying a bookshelf while I propped up the other end. What the hell is wrong with you?"

Despite only knowing him for four (conscious) days, Stephen was not fooled for one moment by Tony's wide-eyed, innocent act. "All I'm saying is that what happens between a man and his wardrobe is his own business—"

"Do you want the rest of the story or are you going to continue being an asshole?"

"Touchy, touchy." Tony leaned back in his chair. "So, you have a cloak that lets you fly. Great. Where is it?"

"That's what I was trying to get to." He took in a slow breath. "About six months ago, now, I was caught in another dimension stopping a rather nasty creature from making its way through a rift to Earth." Stephen kept this next part as succinct as possible. "During the fight, the Cloak took a blow that would've likely killed me. It's usually quite resilient to magical damage, but this attack burned and scorched it until it became completely inert." _Completely dead._ He swallowed and looked down at his hands. "Everything I've tried thus far to repair it has not worked. Revi—fixing the Cloak was what I was primarily working on between my duties before I got stuck here." Everyone at Kamar-Taj believed it was irreparable and truly gone. He kept on looking because that's what he _did_, but what hope he clung onto was fading day by day.

And at this rate, he had no idea when he'd be able to get back to his reality.

Tony was silent for a moment. Eventually, he said, voice softer than before, "Sorry to hear that." Stephen looked up at him at the admittedly unexpected amount of sympathy his tone carried, but Tony was looking down to his right with a furrowed brow and lost in his own thoughts. Stephen's brow furrowed in turn; was the other man outright empathetic?

Very unexpected.

Regardless, he felt a wave of exhaustion overcome him and he lowered himself into a reclined position. He was more than ready to end this emotionally exhausting conversation.

Tony was, too, because the moment Stephen leaned further back the engineer stood up. "I should let you get back to sleep."

"You should. And you should try and find sleep, yourself," Stephen said. He couldn't quite help himself—once a doctor, always a doctor.

"Yeah, sure," he answered distractedly. "Night, Doc." He left the room without further conversation.

Stephen stared at the door with a furrowed brow, his thoughts still on the sympathy he just heard. Considering the grief his doppelganger had brought upon Tony, it wasn't a reaction he was prepared for—despite the kindness shown over the last few days. _Maybe something good can come out of all this_, was his last thought before sleep claimed him once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deciding *where* the Compound was with what little info we have on it (Upstate New York by an enormous lake) was difficult; the scene in Infinity War where we see Spider-Man's armor shoot from the Compound towards the Q-ship would not be possible I think since upstate New York is usually regarded at least 60 to 80 miles north of the city, if not farther. I'm not entirely sure how big something would have to be to see it from 100 miles away, so maybe it is possible?
> 
> Anyway, I did find a location that met all the other requirements, including low mountains in the background. So here, the Compound is located at the Ashokan Reservoir, about a 2 hour drive north from NYC. Check it out on Google maps, it's gorgeous.
> 
> (Funny enough, after deciding this I found a guy on imgur who found the exact bit of the Hudson riverbank they modeled the border of the facility on, and it turns out it's located in a State Park in Straasburg… 10 miles from the reservoir. And it doesn't have the mountains (plus it's on the Hudson, not an enclosed body of water) so I'm happy with my location.)


	4. Break the chains

The next day was filled with more physio and more reading. At this point of time Stephen could sit at the table within the room to eat his meals, which was worlds better than the bed tray.

He noticed that at some point between last night and the late morning that he had been given access to major news websites that had previously been absent. It was an interesting development, though Stephen was unsure what inspired the further extension of trust from Tony. He kept his readings on current events light, content at the moment to read the headlines rather than give the entirely-too-nosey Tony Stark more material to stalk him through. Stephen was fairly certain he was tracking his every move with the tablet, considering the other measures that had been made to contain him.

Still, Tony was… not what he had expected. He had his own reality's Tony Stark within his head always fighting this reality's impression, but despite all that, even if he didn't have the clashing versions… it didn't meet his expectations of a billionaire, Avenger or no.

For one thing, he was considerably more personable than Stephen had imagined, even with his blunt mannerisms. Maybe it was the outright bizarre circumstances that made Tony more informal than he generally imagined billionaires were to strangers. Surprising friendliness aside, another part that outright baffled Stephen was that the business mogul seemed to always have enough spare time to visit him, though he remained completely in the dark as to _why_ Tony was visiting him daily. It wasn't as if he had been prodded for more information.

Tony came yet again that evening, this time after Stephen had eaten dinner and thought that perhaps the trend was going to end. "Oh hey, are you allowed to be out of bed?" he asked in greeting.

"Yes," he answered, rolling his eyes. "You're not my doctor."

"No, but I've heard doctors make the worst patients," he lightly retorted as he took the other seat at the table. "I don't really need to do anything, though; I'm pretty sure Doctor Cho can get anyone back into bed just by guilting them."

Stephen lightly sighed. "As I said, I'm fine. She's cleared me for sitting and non-strenuous activity."

"Board games don't count as strenuous, right?"

He raised his brows. "Not usually, no. You want to play chess again?"

Tony waved his arm. "Eh, that was so two days ago. Something else. Maybe one of the classic games."

He shrugged. "I don't particularly care." He couldn't remember the last time he had played board games several nights in a row. Probably not since his childhood, actually.

"So how about _Operation_?" Tony said entirely too casually. Stephen gave him an even, unamused look that he didn't break until the man continued. "Okay, maybe not my best joke."

"If that's what your jokes are like, I suggest you stop making them," was his dry reply.

"Ouch. That hurts me right in the feels, Doc," he said right back. "I'd say _Monopoly_, but that might be giving you an unfair disadvantage."

Stephen snorted. "It's a game of chance."

"Strategy is a significant factor in it," Tony argued back good-naturedly.

"Strategy is useless if you roll poorly."

"And I'll show you just how wrong you are when I bankrupt you. C'mon, let me see your tablet. They have this great digital version nowadays that makes it less likely for a player to angrily flip the board."

He handed the tablet to Tony. "Speaking from experience?"

"Happy's a really sore loser."

That was a new name. His brow furrowed. "Happy?"

"Friend of mine. Used to be my bodyguard and driver, before the whole Iron Man thing. Then became Head of Security at Stark Industries. These days he's—" Tony broke off and looked to the side. "I guess you could say he's a personal bodyguard again, but it's by no means a demotion." He then focused again on the tablet. Stephen's brow furrowed, but Tony quickly pushed forward, saying, "Anyway, he flipped the Monopoly board at least three times that I can remember. There might be times I don't remember, I'll admit that much. I've played drunk _Monopoly_ a few times."

He stared at him. "That sounds horrible."

"It was amazing. You need to live a little, Doc. I'd say we should do that, but Doctor Cho would kill me if you managed to hurt yourself while you're still her patient, so we'll have to do this sober."

"However will I manage," Stephen deadpanned as the tablet began to make noises that he knew the board game certainly did not make.

Tony set it down on the table. "I'm sure you'll think of a way. Anyway, I call dibs on the racecar."

* * *

It wasn't until physio was done (for the second-to-last time, and he knew the exercises by heart now) and after lunch had passed that Stephen came to two realizations: one, it had been seven days since he had been brought here and two, he had become entirely too lax with his situation.

It was on the fifth day being here, four days from first waking up and the first day he had any real strength, that he had astrally explored the area to find that he was at the Avengers Compound. He had meant to explore more yesterday, but he had been distracted by his own quiet musings regarding his circumstances instead of working further to _improve_ his circumstances.

And now that he was almost fully recovered (or at least recovered _enough_), he needed to get his head back in the game. His doppelganger was still out there and he had to think of a way to stop him. He needed to reconnect with Wong to see what he had learned from all the photographs he took at his base in Sovokia and figure out where they should move from there. But first and foremost, he had to find a way out of the Avengers Compound.

Stephen had a loose plan in mind. The big problem was, of course, the cuffs. He had not openly tried anything, but he was able to prod at them with the same abilities that allowed him to detect the presence of magic and they definitely worked on some level, though how well he wouldn't know unless he tried to use some of his skills. But the last thing he wanted was to appear hostile to Tony, and so he refrained from trying anything.

However, as the cuffs were Tony Stark's invention, what he was hoping to find were some schematics lying around. It was a bit of a long shot, but it was worth investing the time searching for wherever Tony made his inventions and, if he was lucky, finding them. If he found them, he would see what type of mechanics were involved in taking them off. They had no visible keyholes and he had yet to mess with what appeared to be covers of some sort; he wasn't entirely sure if he had the strength in his hands to pry said covers off, anyway. If he did manage to disable the cuffs, it would only be a matter of getting himself to his sling ring to portal out of there.

There were a lot of ifs in his plan. But it was better than waiting idly for another week for his second plan, which was the admittedly desperate idea of astrally travelling from New York to Wong's place in Sedona, Arizona after his body was fully healed. He could move significantly faster in his astral form, yes, but that was still about 2500 miles away.

And Stephen really didn't want to travel 2500 miles in his astral form. More importantly, he didn't want to spend another week doing nothing. So first he was going to try and find the cuff's schematics as well as where Tony was keeping his sling ring. Easy enough.

He set the tablet down on the table and eased the reclining chair back. _All hospital rooms should have a reclining chair_, he thought idly as he folded his hands over his chest and closed his eyes, then pushed himself out of his body.

He didn't think there was any sort of engineering spaces in the building he was being kept in, but Stephen did another sweep of the rooms, keeping an eye out for his sling ring as well, before determining there was nothing of interest and pushing himself out of the building to look at the other buildings that made up the compound.

The main building looked as good as any to start searching.

He mentally named off the rooms as he went through them, passing the more public spaces quickly. Foyer, halls, meeting room, meeting room, large conference room… oh, living room and kitchen. Interesting. It was made to accommodate quite a few people, as well. There were stairs that led further up, but he was more interested in the stairs leading down. _What did the Avengers keep in the basement?_

He found that they kept workshops and labs in the basement. Stephen smiled to himself at the large pieces of machinery behind the glass walls. He slipped through them easily and began to look around for anything resembling schematics or other prototypes for the cuffs, as well where they could possibly be keeping his sling ring. He wouldn't be surprised if Tony was analyzing it in some manner.

With that thought in mind he searched, and it only took a minute of looking around the expansive area to find his sling ring. It was in a sealed container of some sort, something that looked like it was consistently scanning it and inputting data into a nearby monitor. He squinted at the text; huh, apparently it was only partially made of brass… and he had no idea what that element was supposed to be. _Was_ that even an element? Very interesting.

He turned away from the computer and went around the corner to the next set of machines, and his brow furrowed in surprise. Now _these_ ones he recognized: they were very much a part of his world during med school. Clinical chemical analyzers, hematology analyzers, biochemical analyzers, and many more machines both large and small stood in the space, all very sleek and clearly the best that money could buy. His brow furrowed in thought; he supposed having access to such analysis quickly would be needed for the Avengers, considering the types of things they fought. It was a pathologist's dream come true, that much was obvious.

Stephen floated closer to the machines as he realized a couple of them were currently running some sort of diagnostics. He frowned softly at their rather unusual settings, then looked over at the computer monitor connected to the intricate setup and began to read the data. A window at the top left of the monitor kept a scroll of data brought forth from the testing as it became available. He could see they were doing a series of tests on someone's blood for both the usual things, such as white blood cell count, to some rather strange tests that involved looking for trace metals that usually wouldn't be in someone's blood at all. His eyes moved across the screen to the patient's data on the right. There was no name, but there was basic data regarding the blood sample as well as some medical history…

He stilled.

That was _his_ medical history.

They were testing _his blood_. And with the number of tests being run on it, it was no insignificant amount of testing.

A wave of fury washed over him. Barring life or death situations, consent was a major aspect of treating a person within the medical field. And while he had been dying, absolutely nothing, nothing excused the fact that they were running God knew how many tests on his blood for purposes he couldn't even imagine. Was Stark trying to weaponize it? Trying to find the element that created magic or some such nonsense?

Stephen was broken out of his thoughts by the sudden presence of raw power within his vicinity. It felt both incredibly foreign and yet familiar at the same time. Before he could really pivot his line of thinking and ponder further on that, he heard a voice say, "Tony? Are you in here?" from around the corner. Giving the machines one last look, he rounded the corner and stared at the sight before him.

He had seen photos of the being that was called Vision online, but being in his presence was another thing entirely. For one, photos could not convey the immense amount of power emanating from him. The source was obvious: the gem within his head blazed with it.

He narrowed his eyes and floated a little closer to study the unusual gem even as Vision stilled to look around the room. He knew sources of raw power, had felt them across the multiverse several times, but this was of a unique sort that was so very different and yet something rather recognizable, though how…

And then Stephen realized why it was so familiar: it felt, in many ways, just like the Eye of Agamotto.

That was an Infinity Stone.

Suddenly, a strange wave of raw power spread from Vision, going through him and causing him to grab his head in surprise. That had felt… very weird, almost intruding in some way. Before he could make more of it, Vision opened his eyes and looked towards him.

No, looked _at_ him.

Vision narrowed his eyes.

Stephen, in return, bolted the hell out of the regular flow of time to speed back into his body.

This was not going to end well.

* * *

The consequences came not ten minutes later. The door opened and Tony came in, only now he was suited in full Iron Man gear sans face mask. The lack of mask allowed Stephen to see the gathered fury on his face.

"So, funny thing happened just now," said Tony, sarcasm dripping off his words. "Turns out that Vision just caught a glimpse of a ghost that looks exactly like you. From your complete lack of surprise, I'm thinking it was you rather than your doppelganger."

Stephen remained seated as he answered, "It seems you have everything figured out."

"If I had _that_, I wouldn't be here," he retorted. "How'd you do that? The cuffs were designed to block you from using magic!"

"I'm sure it's doing what you programmed it to do sufficiently," he bit back.

Tony pointed a finger at him. "Don't lie to me."

"I'm not." He leaned forward. "I imagine the magic you programmed these devices to stop was the sort of magic you've been studying; you were looking to block the offensive attacks you saw in S.I., weren't you?" He pressed his lips together. "As you can see, I'm not the one currently being _offensive_."

Tony's lips downturned. "I call this being ready. After all, the cuffs don't seem to completely work. For all I know, they won't block your so-called 'offensive magic,' either."

His lips remained in a thin line. "I suppose we'll never know."

A brief look of confusion passed over his face before realization came. "You haven't tried?"

"I had no need to. And I certainly won't give you any further data for you to examine." Stephen's lips downturned into a sneer. "You've already taken plenty of that without my consent."

Tony rolled his eyes. "You were _dying_; of course we had to get your medical info!"

His eyes hardened. "Really? And is that tube of my blood you're analyzing in your workshop for the betterment of my health?"

"First," he started, his expression as hard as Stephen's, "you had no right to snoop all ghost-like in my workshop."

"And you had no right to my blood!"

"Second," he continued, ignoring the comment, "Pepper has been in a coma for nearly eight fucking months; if the cure to fixing her lies in the hocus pocus entangled within your DNA, then I'll find it."

Stephen's upper lip curled as he grit his teeth in growing anger. Magic didn't even work like that, but he was too frustrated to even try to explain that. "I will not be your lab rat."

"You don't have a choice in the matter," Tony snapped back. "The way I see it, you _owe_ me. I saved your life, treated you with the best medicine known to man, and gave you freedoms and kindness no one else would've bothered with."

His nostrils flared and he lifted a cuffed wrist up. "You call _this_ freedom? Kindness?"

"Considering what the CIA would've done with you instead, yeah!" Tony shouted. "Never mind if it was the Russians or the Chinese. Hell, your double even pissed off the Canadians!" He paused to take a breath and exhaled slowly. "So yeah, with all I gave you, I'm more than happy to take whatever I need from you to help her."

"You could do that," Stephen replied, each word dripping with sarcasm, "or perhaps, I don't know, maybe you should talk with a fucking neurosurgeon who's best equipped to understand what she's going through!"

Tony's eyes flashed in renewed fury. "That's because _you're_ the one who put her there!"

Stephen slammed his hand on the table in his anger, and his own fury mixed with pain came out in his next words. "_I'm not that man!" _He then clenched his teeth together in an attempt to control himself as his hand throbbed in protest.

Tony took a step forward, but thought better of it and stepped back. Anger remained in his eyes, but he said, "FRIDAY, have a nurse bring an ice pack." He took another step back towards the door. "This conversation isn't over yet, Strange. I won't have you spying on us."

"And I will not remain your prisoner forever," he said lowly in turn.

His frown deepened at Stephen's words. "Yeah, sure. You know what? Maybe next time I'll just leave you to die. It'd be easier than dealing with your bullshit." With that he left, and the door locking behind him sounded louder than all days previous.

* * *

Later that evening found Stephen again in the recliner. The tablet was open on another periodical, but his eyes were unfocused. While his body felt weary, his mind was on fire, and he was loath to lay down until he knew he would fall asleep; he'd been laying around more than enough.

Tony had not been back since their argument. The only person he saw for the rest of the day was one of his nurses, who had come with ice for his hand soon after the incident, then again later on with dinner. He couldn't say he was surprised that Tony didn't show up for a game after, but it twinged his emotions in a way that made Stephen very irritated.

The guy was basically holding him prisoner. He was studying him like a lab rat. Stephen wasn't supposed to _like_ him.

_Fast onset of Stockholm Syndrome_, he thought wryly. Stephen sighed and tried to push his encroaching thoughts to the back of his mind and concentrate on the words of the article instead.

Some time later, long after Stephen had given up on the article and had settled for brooding instead, a very familiar sound broke through the silence. It filled him with both incredulous disbelief and overflowing elation, and he lifted his head just as a bright orange gateway manifested in his room near the bed.

"Wong!" he cried in surprise as he jumped to his feet.

A look of stark relief broke over his friend's face before quickly schooling itself. "Come on!"

He needn't be told twice; FRIDAY was likely already alerting Tony to this new development. He hurried through the portal as quickly as he could, and within five seconds of its appearance, he was through and the sparks shrunk again into nothing.

Wong had brought him somewhere outside and nowhere near civilization; there was no light pollution to dim the bright stars in the sky. The moon was beyond full and starting to wane, but emitted enough light to show Stephen a flat, forested green land that reminded him of the backwoods of Nebraska from his childhood.

He turned his attention back to the present. There were a hundred questions he wanted to ask Wong, but first— "We need to get these off. I don't know how well they actually work in blocking all my abilities, but I'm not going to try anything with them on because I don't want to give T—Stark more data. But I also wouldn't be surprised if they had some sort of tracker in them, considering their purpose."

"Let me see." Wong took one of his wrists and carefully examined it. "There is magic that will short out technological items, but usually the item being disabled is not attached to a person."

"These could go in the shower without being affected," Stephen pointed out. "I think they're rather self-contained."

"I don't want to risk it," was Wong's firm reply. "Not when I have only just learned you're still alive. Besides," he stated before Stephen could retort, "we have someone who I can consult."

Stephen's brow furrowed. "For Stark's tech? Seriously?"

"For any tech. And we have time: if there's a tracking device in those cuffs, it will take some time for any sort of authority to get out here, if Stark dares tell anyone in the first place."

"He _will_ tell Colonel Rhodes," Stephen said, "but they'd have to explain why they need forces out here in the first place, and I'm pretty certain they never told anyone that they actually had me. Where is _here_, anyway?"

"Northern Arkansas. We're not too far from an abandoned theme park that's conveniently located nowhere near a city. Now stay here; I don't want this hypothetical tracker going through to Buenos Aires."

_Buenos Aires? Seriously?_ But Wong was making a portal and it was too dark to make out anything. Before he could so much as blink, his friend snapped it shut behind him, leaving him alone in the backwaters of Arkansas without a sling ring. Rude.

A few minutes later the portal opened again and Wong walked out with someone Stephen didn't recognize. He couldn't make out much of his features in the dim light; he was shorter than him by three or so inches, was probably tan (of some sort), definitely middle-aged, clean-shaven with a partially balding head of dark hair, and appeared somewhat annoyed, as if he was being inconvenienced.

"This is Jose," Wong said in explanation. "Jose, Stephen. Jose, these," he gestured to the cuffs, "are Stark-made. Unlikely you'll find any schematics online. Can you disable them?"

"Let me see," he answered. Jose spoke English with a heavy accent which, well, wasn't that surprising considering Wong had said Buenos Aires. The newcomer pulled out a small but powerful flashlight and took Stephen's wrist without so much as a word asking if he could. That irked him, but as he wanted the damn things off sooner rather than later he kept his mouth shut.

"It would be more easy for me if you sit," Jose said, and Stephen acquiesced, calves and knees sinking into the damp, mildew-filled grass. He sat on his bare feet in some small attempt to keep them from becoming half-dead with the cold.

The other man sat beside him before pulling out what turned out to be a rather impressive-looking toolkit. As he started prying the cover of the left cuff off, Stephen asked Wong, "How do you two know each other?"

"Master Minoru had a couple cousins she kept in touch with that live in Argentina," Wong answered. "Jose is married to one of them. While he is not one to master the Mystic Arts, he's invested time in studying how magic interacts with technology."

Jose snorted. "You say I do not 'master the Mystic Arts'. I did try a little and I hated it. It feels like many electric shocks over and over again. I am not a magic conductor." He got the cover off the first cuff and shined the flashlight at the workings underneath, then grabbed a tool Stephen didn't have a name for and began tinkering; sadly he couldn't see what the man was doing.

"I don't think magic's supposed to feel like that," Stephen mumbled.

"It can feel different between individuals," Wong answered. "Regardless, despite not practicing it, Jose is well versed in magic theory and helped set up the modern technology we have at Kamar-Taj and the Sanctums. I believe he got the internet to cooperate in Kamar-Taj in 2001."

"1999. It was more the computers rather than the internet." He stuck the flashlight in between his teeth to hold it up as he used both hands to do… something. Stephen still couldn't see what.

Wong ignored the correction. "Furthermore, learning the intricacies of Stark tech has been a hobby of his ever since Stark became Iron Man and moved away from weapons production."

"Still a fucking asshole," Jose said around the flashlight in his mouth, causing Stephen to bark a surprised laugh.

"He's definitely something," Stephen said. "How did you find me?" he asked, looking at Wong.

"Our contact at S.I.," he answered. "I believe I mentioned them before."

Stephen searched his memories for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, on the first day we met, actually. How in the world did they figure out I was there?"

"Happy coincidence. From what I understand, a lot of technology Stark Industries makes for the Avengers is subsidized by the US government. This includes several of Mr Stark's projects—including those." He nodded his chin towards the cuffs. By this point, Jose had pulled out a little square something out of the left cuff with a slight smile before crushing it, and had now moved onto dismantling the right. "Naturally, the people that work at the Avengers Compound have to keep track of such things. Our contact found that one of the prototypes was missing. After they informed security, it quickly got back that Stark was 'messing with the prototype' and would hold onto it 'indefinitely'."

Jose managed to pry off the right cuff's cover and was already working at something within it, mumbling occasionally in Spanish to himself. Wong spared him a glance before continuing, "I'm not sure how much time passed, but apparently our contact had reason to go into Stark's labs in the compound and, despite what he said, didn't see the cuffs. They wondered if it was possible they were in use, then touched base with me a few hours ago to ask if anyone from the order was missing. The only person was, of course, you. A quick search astrally and I was able to locate you."

"I'm grateful," said Stephen. "I have a lot to tell you."

Wong's lips slightly downturned. "So do I."

That expression on Wong sent alarm bells ringing in his head. Before he could ask further, Jose pulled out another small square thing and crushed it, grinning. "Both trackers removed," he confirmed. "And there is no third tracker, because Stark is not as smart as me. Always have a third, or four or five." He placed his tools back into his bag and stood up. "We need to go back to my home."

Stephen frowned. "Wait," he said, scrambling to his feet. "What about the cuffs?"

"That is why we need to go to Buenos Aires," he replied. "Stark is not as smart as me, but he's still smart. You won't get those off with only these." He lifted his bag for emphasis. "Need better tools. A portal, Wong."

He stared at the Argentinian in bemusement even as Wong wordlessly made a gateway again. He followed the both of them to the other side of the world, and the golden sparks fizzled away into nothingness in the quiet night surrounding the Midwestern woods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's dedicated to Argentina. I honestly don't remember when I learned that there was a sizable community of Japanese living in Argentina, but I remember thinking it was super cool. So I decided Minoru has family there and one of them married outside the Japanese community. And that's how my worldbuilding tends to just spiral out of control.
> 
> This chapter's also dedicated to the Marble Falls Township, Arkansas, population 665, and most well known for an abandoned hillbilly-themed amusement park known as Dogpatch. I love the US for stuff like this. This is why geography's awesome.


	5. I do what it takes

"He's gone," were Tony's first words to Rhodey when the colonel answered the call.

"What do you mean 'he's gone'?" Rhodey asked back in a lowered voice full of disbelief. Somewhere not entirely private, then.

Tony ran his free hand through his hair as he explained what happened five minutes ago.

_"Boss," FRIDAY's alarmed voice rang through his office, immediately drawing him away from where he was reading an email regarding a status update on Pepper. "I just detected a large spike of energy in Doctor Strange's room. Something is forming within it."_

_"Bring up the picture," he ordered, and a live feed from one of the cameras hidden within the room came up on his screen. _

_Tony saw the bright orange sparks of what he knew, from months of studying security footage, to be a portal. "Shit!" He leapt up from his chair and sprinted from the room, even as the calculations in the back of his mind proved the action entirely fruitless._

_And that's exactly how it turned out. He just reached the top of the stairs leading down from the second story of the large building when FRIDAY said, "It's gone, boss—and so is Doctor Strange."_

"Wait," came Rhodey across the phone. "Are you telling me that he created the portal, or that there's someone else out there that knew where he was and made it for him?"

"The latter, from what I saw," Tony said. "I'm having FRIDAY cut the footage to store for further study, but I don't want to send anything over the web or phone data. When can you get back to the Compound?"

"I was coming back tomorrow afternoon, but I'll change it to tonight. You'll see me before sunrise."

"Talk then," he said, and swiped away at the hologram with Rhodey's picture to end the call. His posture deflated as he considered his current project in the labs below and the remaining blood sample. At the rate the blood tests were going, what samples he had of Stephen's blood would soon be depleted. And considering the wizard's blood had shown absolutely nothing unique so far, he had a terrible feeling that he would come out of this whole series of tests with nothing to show for it.

With that in mind, Tony came to the cold, sickening realization that his first real lead to getting Pepper back was gone. And considering their last conversation, it was unlikely Stephen would ever show his face again. He couldn't fully blame him, either.

_What do I do now?_

* * *

Tony watched the video again with Rhodey soon after his arrival to the Compound at about three in the morning. Exhaustion ate at the corners of his mind, but a nervous energy kept him from falling asleep.

The security footage from all those power plants and even the generally superior footage from S.I.'s feeds were nothing compared to what the Compound's cameras were able to capture. The bright sparks hissed the moment the portal began to form and remained constant throughout its existence.

The angle of the cameras didn't give him any insight as to the identity of the man beyond the portal, but Stephen's shout of "Wong!" gave him a name, at least. Unfortunately, his research into Strange's past showed no Wongs, leaving Tony at a dead end. The wizard was quick to hop through the portal and it immediately closed behind him.

The whole video was not even ten seconds, but he had a difficult time stopping himself from watching it over and over. It seemed Rhodey had the same issue; he watched the footage several times before speaking.

"This… isn't good," he said finally. "How on earth did this guy find Strange in the first place?"

"Magic?" was Tony's deadpan reply.

"Even then," Rhodey retorted. "Think about it. If it was easy to find him, this would've been an issue the first day, right? But he's been with us for a week."

Tony shrugged. "How the hell should I know? Maybe it took a week for some tracking spell to be prepared. Maybe he was able to communicate from his mind with his wizard buddy." He made a sour expression at the idea.

Rhodey rubbed a hand over his face. "Where'd you say the tracker put him before it was removed?"

"Arkansas," he replied, looking towards another screen that had several different maps of the area. "I pulled up a satellite image of the coordinates; it's in the middle of absolutely nowhere. The closest things to the patch of forest they landed in are a township with less than a thousand people and an abandoned hillbilly-themed amusement park. I'll check it out later, but I doubt there's anything there."

"I agree," the colonel said. "So wizards can make portals into secure areas that span over a thousand miles. That is an insane security risk."

"We already know about the security risk," Tony mumbled. "Otherwise governments the world over wouldn't be guarding the interiors of power plants with armed soldiers right now."

Rhodey hummed in acknowledgment, then leaned his head back and sighed. "I don't think he's going to go out of his way to cause trouble like the other Strange, but I don't like that we still don't know where he's placed all the uranium. And who knows? He may have made a good ally eventually."

Tony exhaled. "Yeah… I don't think that's gonna happen."

Rhodey turned his head towards him with a sharp movement and narrowed his eyes. "What _else_ happened?"

He ran a hand through his hair. "So Stephen—Strange. Our Strange." He ignored the look Rhodey was giving him. "Turned out the cuffs didn't work completely. He could still do some magic."

"What?"

"Yeah. Apparently he could turn himself into a ghost or something and snoop around."

"...what?"

Tony waved his hand. "Spirit, consciousness, whatever. Point is, he could go wherever he wanted in the Compound and God knows where else and invisibly lurk."

Rhodey's brow furrowed. "That's incredibly concerning."

"You're telling me. I wouldn't have any idea about it if Vision hadn't sensed something and 'tapped into the stone', as he said. He saw Strange snooping in the labs."

His brow furrowed. "Did Vision recognize him?"

"He didn't; he knows I'm looking for Stephen Strange but I made the facial reconstruction and recognition check during that long time he had his corresponder off…" They paused to share a look; neither of them said it aloud, but both of them had a very, very good idea as to who Vision had been seeing during those times in the last two years. "Anyway, Vision described who he saw and well, Strange has a distinctive look."

"Are you sure it wasn't the other Strange?" Rhodey asked.

Tony nodded. "Yeah, uh. I sort of confronted him."

He lifts his eyes upward. "You were wearing the suit, weren't you."

"The best defense is a good offense," he retorted.

"He has shown no signs of aggression whatsoever."

"Snooping around the labs is way, way aggressive."

"You could've waited for me."

He had no good answer for that other than the obvious. "Well, I can't do that now. He's gone." Rhodey ran a hand over his face and Tony looked away as he continued the story. "During our last—well, argument, Pepper was brought up. He saw I was testing his blood. I told him why and he was still really pissed about it. Whatever," he added, muttering it to himself, then continued more clearly, "But then he mentioned that he was a magic user with a neurosurgical background."

Tony could feel Rhodey's gaze on him now, but he kept his own eyes on the corner of the room. "I spent the time it took for you to get here to finish all the tests on his blood. I haven't found any anomalies. None. And I looked at all the other tests again, and there really was nothing in his DNA or what brain scans we got—nothing that was different from other people. Nothing."

He heard Rhodey exhale softly behind him. "We'll find a cure for her, Tony."

Tony could not help but bark out a bitter laugh in turn. "Yeah, or I just chased the best possible chance of that away." That thought brought a heaviness to his chest that made it harder to breathe.

He needed to be alone.

Without another word, he stood up and left Rhodey to find a quiet place to calm down. And that was not that difficult, either. The Avengers Compound was eerily quiet these days.

It was always quiet and he was always alone.

* * *

The next four days for Tony were some of the worst in a while. Granted, the entire year had been complete hell since Pepper landed in a coma, but just like he did near every year in the last decade, he learned to live with his sorrows and push forward to find solutions even as they lurked in the back of his mind.

But the idea that he may have stumbled upon a solution only to have chased it away? That drove Tony insane. To distract himself he threw himself again into his work, speaking with the Wakandan doctor that had relocated to New York "for the foreseeable future" as she studied Pepper's condition and monitored her. She served as a liaison between him and the rest of the team of research scientists and doctors in Wakanda.

"There has to be some way to get her closer to consciousness," he said over the phone. "Your medical tech is years beyond mine—and I don't say that lightly."

"I know," the doctor replied, voice somehow managing to be both professional and sympathetic at the same time. It aggravated him. "And I do not know if she would have moved from a 3 to a 6 on the GCS over the last five months without it. But nothing has changed since we spoke last week, Mr Stark, and even Wakandan technology takes time to evolve. Her case is the first they've ever seen of its sort."

He ran a hand through his hair. "I know, I know," he muttered. "But it's been, what, two months since you found that weird anomaly in the whatsit, the reticular activating system?"

"Located within the reticular formation, yes," she affirmed. "But as I told you, it's unlike any sort of lesion we've ever seen within the brainstem. The injuries treated months earlier were situated within the thalamus and resembled the damage often seen with TBIs. These new scans show something very different happening within the reticular activating system, and the others agree that it may be related to the power source used in the attack. We're still trying to figure it out."

"I don't understand why you can't fix that lesion the same way you did in the thalamus."

"We're not even sure if it's a lesion, Mr Stark. A lesion is our current educated guess, but the best word for it is, as has been said before, an anomaly. We want to be certain of exactly what we're dealing with and have a solution for it before we operate on her again."

His hand went through his hair again. "I know, I know. Sorry. I—I know you're doing all you can. And I appreciate it. I really do." He sighed. "I'll be down tomorrow to say hi to Pep. Thanks for taking my call."

"I wish I had better news, Mr Stark. I'll inform you right away if there are any changes."

"Yeah, thanks." He mumbled a goodbye and hung up, then held his head in his hands. The room was completely quiet but his head roared with everything he had learned about the brain (both to keep up with the Wakandan neuroscientists and in order to hypothesize possible solutions) as well as what he had learned about the energies in Strange's magic. What little he knew about them bent the laws of physics in ways he never imagined them to bend, and coming up with a solution to contain them had nothing to do with actually using them.

But if he could partially halt the energy, surely he could use it in some capacity. He was _Tony Fucking Stark_; if he couldn't find a way, no one could.

"Boss," FRIDAY's voice cut through his musings, "I detect a sharp spike of energy matching the energy that I recorded from Doctor Strange's room four nights ago."

"What?" he asked, head jerking up.

"It's already gone," she continued before he could ask her to pull up a picture. "But it happened in your office."

He frowned. "Pull up a picture," he said anyway; maybe he'd see something on the screen. But as FRIDAY pulled up an image of his office, it looked exactly the same. His frown deepened and he squinted at it. "I don't see anything different. Was something taken, FRI?"

"I don't believe so, boss; if anything, something was left behind. My sensors are detecting an additional 11.25 grams of weight on your desk."

Bemused, he stood up and started his way away from the workshop and up to his office two stories above. "What is that? A pencil?"

"I don't think so."

He hummed in response. "Tell Rhodey to meet me in my office," Tony said, then hurried up the stairs until he reached the second floor and after, his office. He stepped in slowly and scoped the room before taking quiet, cautious steps over towards the desk.

Turned out it was an envelope, of all things, lying just beside his keyboard. The front of it was completely blank except for the name "Tony Stark", written in a rather elegant, old-fashioned script.

Tony squinted at it. "Scan that envelope just by my keyboard, FRI. There's no powder or anything weird in it, is there?"

"The only chemical makeup I'm detecting are the materials used to make common printer paper and traces of ink."

Satisfied with the answer, he crossed the remaining distance between himself and the desk and picked up the envelope. As he began to open it, Rhodey came into the room.

"Someone was here?" he asked.

"A wizard of some sort," said Tony. "Left a letter, of all things." He pulled it out and quickly read it over, brow furrowing as he scanned its contents.

> _Mr Stark,_
> 
> _I imagine you are angry with me for taking leave of your hospitality so abruptly, but as you were sincere in your words, I was sincere in mine. However, I do regret that my last words with you were in argument. We have a common goal and we both may be better equipped to deal with it working together._
> 
> _If you agree, please meet me at the enclosed coordinates tomorrow at dawn, local time. If not, then I will do nothing to hinder your efforts as long as you do not hinder mine, and you will hear from me no more._
> 
> _Respectfully,_
> 
> _Dr S._
> 
> _P.S. Please bring my sling ring with you. I believe you've had ample time to study it._

Under his name were a set of geo coordinates that he read off to FRIDAY; she brought up the location on his computer monitor and it turned out that they pointed to a rural area further upstate, about a hundred miles north of the Compound. The screen flashed with a political map of the state's county lines before zooming into a satellite picture of the area. It looked like it was near some sort of body of water.

He frowned at the screen, then looked back at the short letter. After reading it again, Tony shook his head. "This is the most formal amount of nothing I've ever read."

"Let me have a look," said Rhodey as he strode forward from the doorway, and Tony handed it over. As the colonel read it, his brow furrowed in thought.

"What're you thinking?"

"Well," he started, "he's being very careful to be as general as possible. If anyone who didn't know the situation read this, they virtually have no information about the specifics. The formality helps mask him further, though that might just be him; he was unfailingly polite when I talked to him."

"Yeah," Tony answered, "well, except for our last conversation. That wasn't so great."

Rhodey huffed softly, then continued, "What I don't understand is how he expects you to meet him without the coordinates he supposedly enclosed. Is the message encrypted in some manner?" He glanced at the monitor, then added, "Did you already figure it out? Because I can't see any pattern here."

He blinked in complete bafflement. "Uh… they're just under his name."

"There's nothing under his name." Rhodey smoothed the letter on the desk.

Tony stared; he could see the coordinates just fine. "FRIDAY," he said slowly, "do you see any coordinates on the letter?"

"No, Mr Stark, I detect no numbers on the note."

He sighed, long and low. "I fucking hate magic."

"Well," Rhodey said, "that's definitely one way to make sure that no one but the intended reader gets the location. Where do those coordinates point?" He glanced at the ambiguous satellite image on the monitor.

"Further upstate, right in the middle of nowhere." Tony fidgeted with a loose string on his shirt. "Do you think it's a trap? Or that he'll try to lie to me?"

Rhodey raised his brows. "Do you?"

He shrugged. "My gut says no, but my gut instincts the last three years have been complete shit." A deprecating smile crossed over his face.

The colonel offered a small, sympathetic half-smile before saying, "I don't think so. Unfortunately, all I have is my gut as well. But if you do go, I can go with you."

Tony considered the offer before he shook his head. "I think I'll be fine. This… feels genuine. And he definitely seemed to hate his other self."

"I saw that, too," said Rhodey. "So you're definitely going?"

He stared at the monitor for a moment, then slowly nodded. "Yeah, I am. I'm not sure if I'll agree to a partnership, but I'll hear him out. Get a feel for him when he's unleashed and out in the wild."

Rhodey huffed in amusement, then sobered. "Figure out what he wants in working with you. And if what he says seems smart, we gotta know where he's stashed the uranium. And he needs to know you and I are a package deal."

"Platypus, I'm touched."

"And I'm serious; there's no way in hell either of us should deal with Strange—the bad Strange—on our own. Even if this good Strange is helping." He frowns. "This is like dealing with two Rosses again, only worse."

"What, Agent Ross and Secretary Ross?" Tony quipped back. "That's easy. I've just taken to calling the good Strange _Stephen_ and the bad Strange uh, _Strange_. Maybe we should scrap the names altogether and call the good one _Doc_ and the bad one _Asshole_."

"But how will I know if people are talking about the bad Strange or if they're talking about you?" Rhodey quipped, and Tony retaliated by chucking one of his thicker pieces of unopened mail on his desk at him. Rhodey blocked it with his forearm, chuckling. "I'll go with _Stephen_, if you do work out something with him." He sobered and added, "And if you do work something out, I think Vision needs to be brought into this as well."

Tony pursed his lips, then slowly nodded. "Into the planning fold, sure. If we try anything resembling stealthy, I'm not sure if he could come."

"We'll figure it out if it gets that far," said Rhodey. "For now, let's just see what he exactly wants from this—and see if he'll agree to our terms."

He nodded again and looked back at the satellite image on the screen. More bodies to help take down Strange was no bad thing, but he had more than one reason to see if it was possible to work with Stephen in some form of partnership.

Despite himself, far deep within him another form of hope began to kindle.

* * *

Just as the next day dawned, Tony arrived by air to the coordinates given in the letter; FRIDAY detected a heat signature quickly within the area. Stephen was alone and standing on the banks of the small lake he had seen in the satellite photo.

As Tony descended, he got a better look at the location the wizard had chosen for their rendezvous. It was a relatively large clearing filled with a native short grass that went all the way up to the edge of the lake. Surrounding the clearing and going on for miles in every direction were thirty- to forty-foot tall cedars, hickories, and birches.

It was a remarkably peaceful place.

Tony landed in the center of the clearing and about forty feet behind Stephen with not exactly a thump, but it wasn't soundless, either. The wizard, however, didn't react to his arrival; rather Stephen kept his back to him, gaze set towards the still water. From what he could see, the other man was again dressed in what he guessed were his wizard robes: dark blue cloth secured by an unnecessary amount of belts. Maybe they were some sort of weird ceremonial thing for wizards; he had no idea.

There was nothing for it: since Stephen wasn't moving, and his patience to wait for his move ended about three seconds after landing, Tony crossed the distance between them, allowing the nanites of the facemask to disperse.

Stephen kept his back to him and remained silent as Tony got closer, and he honestly couldn't tolerate the stillness any longer. "As you can see, I'm here—or you would see it if you bothered to look behind you. Rather trusting of you, considering the circumstances."

Stephen didn't turn to him, but he did offer a reply. "You would not have come here alone if you were going to attack me."

"Wouldn't I?" Tony retorted. "I've done many things by myself."

"But not this," Stephen said. "If you considered me a threat, you would've brought Rhodey at least, just as you did with my doppelganger in Sokovia."

He made a good point. "Maybe," he answered, stepping up to be adjacent to him on the shoreline. Tony looked over; Stephen's gaze remained on the water, an unreadable look across his face. "But you're right, I'm not here to fight you."

"Did you bring my sling ring?" he asked, glancing sidelong at him.

Tony tapped the small compartment area at his hip. "Right there. But first I want some questions answered."

Stephen huffed, but answered, "Ask away."

"That guy you called Wong—he's another wizard, right? And he made that portal?"

"The preferred term is 'sorcerers,' or 'Masters of the Mystic Arts' if we're feeling particularly pretentious."

"Yeah, whatever," he waved his hand in dismissal, which caused Stephen to frown. "He made that portal, right?" He got a short nod in return, and Tony pressed on. "How did he find you in the first place?"

"Magic," Stephen answered, tone as dry as the Sahara.

Tony pointed a finger at him. "I'm serious. Am I going to have to worry about criminals and self-titled supervillains portaling out of cells all over the world?"

"It hasn't happened before, has it?" he retorted. "The Masters of the Mystic Arts do not interfere with other's affairs unless they directly involve another sorcerer or could potentially break reality."

"Break reality? What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"It means exactly that," was the useless, infuriating answer from the wizard-sorcerer-asshole.

He narrowed his eyes. "You're not giving me a lot to work with, here."

"And you still have my sling ring."

"Are you fucking kidding—so what, I give you your stupid little magic trinket back, and you'll start giving me real answers?"

"My answers are completely real, and honest," Stephen answered, and fully turned to face him. "But if you want anything further from me, you need to give something in return. Anything resembling a working partnership won't happen otherwise."

Tony frowned at him. "Don't get ahead of yourself; I said nothing about working with you."

"Then why come at all?"

It was a damn good question that he did not have a fully satisfactory answer to, and what answers he did have were certainly nothing he wanted to tell Stephen. He left the question unanswered and instead placed his hand at his hip. The nanites reformed to open the compartment, and he let the so-called sling ring fall into his hand. He considered throwing the damned thing at Stephen, but remembered his hands and figured that would be unnecessarily douchey behavior, no matter how irritating the wizard was. So he instead held it out as some sort of weird peace offering.

As he took it, Tony said, "Did you know that it's partially made up of a material not found on Earth?"

Stephen raised his brows a bit. "I did not."

"Yeah, I've only seen it one other time before this."

He finished securing it to his belt. "Some alien artifact, I assume."

"That's one way to put it, though I don't think Thor's hammer is your usual alien artifact." That caused Stephen to pause and it was clear that that bit of information had him thinking. Tony did not give him much time for that, though, and pressed onward. "So your little group, you so-called Masters of the Mystic Arts. How many of you are there?"

"Currently a few dozen," he answered. "I don't know the exact numbers for your reality, but I believe it's somewhere over fifty and less than one hundred individuals at various levels of ability."

"Right." Tony felt his stance relax ever-so-slightly at the more thorough answer. "If there's so many of you, how come I've never heard of you guys before all this?"

"As I said, we don't tend to interfere with affairs that go beyond our duties. The order largely lives apart from the rest of the world. We tend to our own."

He crossed his arms. "If that's the case, why is your other self running around and stealing power sources from all over the world? You say that your order's supposed to take care of that, and they're not doing a damn thing."

Tony saw something fleeting cross Stephen's face before his expression turned flat. "Usually they would be. However, circumstances have left the order without the ability to do this."

He crossed his arms. "You're gonna have to give me more than that."

Stephen pressed his lips into a thin line. "The numbers of the Masters of the Mystic Arts usually stands at about one hundred, led by a sorcerer known as the Sorcerer Supreme. The latest in this line of leaders was a woman called the Ancient One. Three years ago, one of the order's masters—named Kaecilius—rejected her ways and took about a dozen others with him.

"Early last year in both this reality and my own, he and the other zealots attacked us. The casualties were… the order was hit hard. Our Sanctum in London only fell after six acolytes and apprentices, and then its master, were killed. Drumm evacuated all those in New York before he was killed, and Hong Kong—Hong Kong was only just spared. And in that line of fights, the most grievous loss was that of the Ancient One."

There was so much to unpack in that explanation that Tony had to take a moment (for him, at least) to sort it out. The first thing that came to mind was, "You guys are in _New York_?"

Stephen raised his brows. "For quite some time, yes. Certainly long before the Avengers made any home there."

"Well, that's only six years old," he retorted. "Most things in New York are older than the Avengers. But I'd have thought a bunch of wizards would've been noticed by someone."

"We don't go out of our way to be noticed," he pointed out. "Was our presence in New York really the only thing you took from that?"

"I got the rest, but it didn't sound like you were done yet." Indeed, Tony was carefully storing away all this information about Stephen's order (though honestly, it sounded a bit like a cult).

Stephen exhaled and turned again to look at the lake. "That is where the similarities between my reality and this reality end. In this universe, the order's numbers were depleted further just over a year ago by the actions of my counterpart." His expression sat upon his face like stone. "The culmination of all these events leaves the order here missing about a fourth of its usual force, and those that either defected or died were largely acolytes or masters. Those that remain continue to protect reality and train those who have potential to take up the mantles lost. They simply cannot afford to lose another highly trained sorcerer." He glanced back at him. "Which is one reason I went after him alone. Usually a rogue sorcerer is taken down with numbers, or by the Sorcerer Supreme—but we don't have one anymore, and no one else can be spared at this time."

Tony again carefully filed away all of this new information to consider further later on, but kept his expression more or less blasé. "And what, you can't just promote a new one?"

"It doesn't quite work like that. The mantle is only bestowed when there is an individual available to wield the powers and responsibilities that come with the position."

"Yeah, but needs must," he pointed out. "And clearly you guys need one if you can't control one rogue wizard."

Stephen made a face at the word. "Unfortunately his powers go beyond that of several Masters, which is why I'm here in the first place." He again looked at him. "Are you willing to help us stop him or not?"

"That depends," Tony answered, crossing his arms. "Are you willing to show me where you stashed all the uranium he stole?"

"I'd be happy to show you the uranium," he replied with a wry smile, causing Tony to frown. "But I don't know where it is."

"...what?"

"Wong hid it. I've told him not to tell me, just in case Strange decides to try and get the information from me. It seemed safer that way."

His brow furrowed. "I can't agree to any sort of partnership until I know that the uranium's secure and not being used for anything dodgy. And what about my stolen arc reactors?"

Stephen shook his head. "There were only fuel canisters in the pocket dimension I opened; he didn't keep all of it in one place. I would say, though, that we found probably the largest part of his collection. Wong has reassured me that it's about sixty percent of the total amount of missing uranium, and I wouldn't be surprised if Strange has used some of that which he stole."

"For what?"

"As another energy source for magic, likely in the pursuit of the new spells he is attempting to create."

_Create_ new spells? He hadn't thought of such a thing, but Tony supposed that if engineers could figure out new ways to manipulate energy, so could magic users. "Create new spells for what purpose?"

Stephen pressed his lips together. "Using magic comes at a price to the wielder. No matter the dimensional source, we're still channeling it through our very mortal bodies, and that effort takes energy. It is very possible for a sorcerer to run out of their innate energy and be unable to cast anything until they've rested.

"There are ways, both safe or dangerous, scrupulous or immoral, to increase the amount of energy one can use before their body needs to rest. Even with all these ways there is always a point where the body gives out. Strange is experimenting with the energy sources he stole, mixing them with interdimensional forces to attempt to find a way to make his own abilities limitless. He wants to use magic with none of the cost."

Tony frowned. "And what would it mean if he accomplished that?"

"He would be nigh unstoppable," Stephen answered, expression hard. "Worse, when there are such imbalances with such forces inside a reality, it tends to cause unintended consequences that could spell trouble for the entire world—and sometimes the entire universe, depending on how bad it becomes. He cannot be permitted to get that far." He looked back at him. "So will you work with us or not?"

He crossed his arms, but his stance was loose otherwise. "We'll need to know where the uranium is," he repeated. "That your people aren't screwing around with it."

"I'm sure Wong will be fine with showing you," said Stephen, "but who's 'we'?"

"Me, Rhodey, Vision."

He narrowed his eyes. "Not the UN."

"Not the UN," Tony answered.

"You understand that my order simply cannot deal with the politics of the Accords. It's completely impractical for us for a very long list of reasons. Need I get into specifics?"

"God no," he answered. "No, I don't plan on involving anyone but those mentioned. Ross is busy juggling all the hubbub with the lawsuits regarding breaches of civil and constitutional rights with the Accords right now, anyway."

"Ross?"

"Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross. He's one of the main players behind the Sokovia Accords and the face of them here in the States. Long story short, he hasn't been bothering us much at all this year." Tony half-smirked. "I did try to offer several amendments about two years ago, maybe four months after they passed them. I had a few of the best lawyers in the country look it over and write up a draft that made sure it wasn't breaking any US laws anymore. Then I sent it overseas to a dozen different countries to cover more bases. But Ross was still being shirty with me and didn't even read them. Ungrateful, honestly."

Stephen made a face. "I spent a week binging the thousand-word document that is the Accords to see what I should expect—they don't exist in my universe. Having to wear tracking bracelets at all times seemed a bit extreme. As did the fact that any enhanced being could be held indefinitely without a trial." He shot him a sidelong look. "I know for a fact that it states the creation of self-aware AI is completely prohibited."

He made a face. "Yeah. That was due to Sokovia."

"Isn't FRIDAY just that?"

Tony frowned at him. "FRIDAY was created beforehand. And she's—she's able to learn, but she'll never be JARVIS. I couldn't program her with that capability due to…" He trailed off and waved an arm. "She's very smart and I was able to keep some personality in her code, but she isn't permitted to be like JARVIS."

"JARVIS is?"

"Her forebearer, I guess you could say. Ultron killed him." He looked to the side.

Stephen frowned softly. "I'm sorry to hear that." Tony turned to look at him, but he was already looking back at the lake. "We're straying off topic. We're agreed to having Wong show you where he stashed the canisters—"

"Rhodey and Vision, too."

"Right. But no others, and certainly no politicians. On my side, only those who rank as a Master will know of this, so that is myself, Wong, and three others. You would primarily be dealing with Wong or myself as the other Masters simply have no time to dedicate to the issue."

"And what would this supposed partnership entail in your head beyond 'taking him down'?" Tony asked.

Stephen shrugged. "Sharing intel and resources primarily, I imagine. You have technology, we have knowledge of the arcane; both might be needed in the end. But I doubt it would change much in your life. We certainly wouldn't get in the way of your daily business and there's little you could do for our own."

He frowned. "How often are you considering these regular exchanges would be, beyond the unexpected?"

He shrugged again. "Once, twice a month?"

Tony had no idea how to feel about that. Tony had no idea _why_ he didn't have a sure feeling about this. Stephen Strange was not insane like his counterpart, but he was still an asshole and magic was absolutely awful. Needing to deal with it twice a month at most? That was awesome.

That was definitely awesome.

Yup.

He pushed away that thought cycle to deal with later (never) and said, "Yeah, that sounds good to me. I need to talk with Rhodey and Vision and make sure they're on board."

"Of course," Stephen answered. "I need to speak with Wong and the other Masters as well. Do you think twenty-four hours will be enough time to speak with them and come to an agreement?"

"Yeah, absolutely."

"Then meet me here at dawn tomorrow. I don't know if Wong will join me or not."

"Same with Rhodey."

"Fine." Stephen paused for a moment, then held out a slightly shaky hand. "Until tomorrow."

Tony let the nanites fall from his palm and took the hand in a gentle, loose handshake. "Until tomorrow."

Stephen withdrew his hand and pivoted to walk away from the lake. He took several steps before raising his left hand towards the trees. Forming a quick circling motion with his right, sparks appeared out of nowhere, hissing in a way that made him feel a discomfort he couldn't quite place. A few seconds later, he was gone.

Tony took a deep breath and let the nanites form across his palm and face again.

_To tomorrow and the future beyond._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to the [reticular formation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reticular_formation) page on Wikipedia. Holllyyyy crap. Writing about brains is hard.
> 
> I read the idea that the sling rings are made of a component found in Mjolnir in another fic, but for the life of me I can't remember where it was (if you recognize the detail from somewhere else let me know where from!)
> 
> Every item mentioned that Stephen mentioned was in the Accords is canon and taken from [the Wiki](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Sokovia_Accords). Most of these are expanded upon in the tie-in comics or the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D show.
> 
> I'm pretty sure Tony is smart enough to know that many ordinances made within the Accords do break laws (US and otherwise) and knew about it from the beginning. I believe he was banking on his money and political power to be able to push for the first amendment of the Accords, as he told those hesitant to sign that they would be amended to get rid of the really problematic areas in CACW. Sadly Tony lost all that favor with Ross and the Accords remained as published until Thanos (and who knows what happened after that). That's my headcanon anyway.
> 
> The characters look at the laws from a US viewpoint since, well, the Avengers are based in the US in 2018 with nothing that looks like expansion yet. I imagine the characters would be more familiar with laws in the country they live in as well. I don't mean to erase the rest of the world and certainly hope it doesn't come across that way! 
> 
> Finally finally finally, this story is done but a sequel to continue this series is coming before November 30th. If you want to be alerted when it's up, you are free to leave a review here just saying you'd like me to let you know when it's up (I'm not sure if you can get alerts for when a series is updated, but if you can, there's that too). Otherwise just look in the series around Nov 30 or watch [my tumblr](https://aelaer.tumblr.com).
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the story :)


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